That's interesting. How cool would it be if Earth did have rings though?!
So why is it that space junk has not turned into rings around Earth, just like Saturn or Neptune? Kessler and Cour-Palais (1978) argued it was because the smaller particles were removed by atmospheric drag before enough mass could accumulate.
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not that cool if it is just junk
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Well: in GEO, ring formation is basically happening
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This is from 6 years ago: Earth's artificial ring. It has become denser since.pic.twitter.com/QialUpWzWX
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Perhaps
@planet4589 could offer insight -
That's part of it. It's also true that it took more than 60 years for the planetary rings to form, I bet. The collision rate is still pretty low even for the small particles and the number of particles (even the untracked ones) is a lot lower than for Saturn.
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1/ Rings form when orbital pieces can interact and average out their velocities: objects going Northeast and Southwest meet and, on average, become pieces with less north-south motion and the same amount of east motion. Enough of this and only East remains in a flat disk.
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2/ most pieces of anthropogenic space junk have hit nothing so far, so they still have their original north-south component (hence inclination). Furthermore, collisions tend to turn objects into shattered debris clouds following more or less the original paths
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