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froggison t1_ixqngn0 wrote

Reply to comment by CameronMH in Mars may be slowly ripping its largest moon apart by peterabbit456

It's possible that Earth used to have visible rings. The theory is that a large body collided with Earth ~4 billion years ago, the debris of which formed visible rings, and those rings eventually formed our moon.

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Academic_Ocelot3917 t1_ixso7c2 wrote

I've heard that Earth might have a ring in the future from the space debris if it isn't cleaned up.

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FlyingSpacefrog t1_ixsrrsr wrote

The total mass of all objects humans have sent into space thus far is insignificant compared to even one of Saturns rings.

Any orbital debris less than 1000 km in altitude is likely to reenter the atmosphere and vaporize itself within the next century, so it has very little chance of forming a permanent planetary ring.

We sort of do have a ring out at geosynchronous orbit already, but it’s very spaced out and consists mostly of intact satellites that are still operational, with another ring right next to it of satellites that are retired and out of fuel which will remain on their current path for millions of years before gravitational interactions from the moon have enough time to significantly impact their orbits. So if we do get a visible ring of debris around earth my bet is it’s going to be near geostationary orbit in altitude

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