Why the inner planets don't have rings like the outer planets?
Why the inner planets don't have rings like the outer planets?
There's actually still scientific dispute about the exact answer to this question. The solar system formed from a giant cloud of gas and particles (literally stardust--the remains of a star that had exploded) billions of years ago. The "dust" clumped together to form the planets. Some of the leftover dust formed the moons of the planets (although the origin of Earth's moon is still up for debate). Some of this dust was too close to the planet to form stable moons, and instead formed rings. It is likely that large rings couldn't form on inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) because the rings are made of frozen icy dust, and the sun is too hot this close to it for the rings to form. Additional fact: Mars has two moons, one of which is very close to the planet. Some astrophysicists predict that it will break apart and become a ring over the next 50 million years.
There's actually still scientific dispute about the exact answer to this question. The solar system formed from a giant cloud of gas and particles (literally stardust--the remains of a star that had exploded) billions of years ago. The "dust" clumped together to form the planets. Some of the leftover dust formed the moons of the planets (although the origin of Earth's moon is still up for debate). Some of this dust was too close to the planet to form stable moons, and instead formed rings. It is likely that large rings couldn't form on inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) because the rings are made of frozen icy dust, and the sun is too hot this close to it for the rings to form. Additional fact: Mars has two moons, one of which is very close to the planet. Some astrophysicists predict that it will break apart and become a ring over the next 50 million years.
