At www.sciencenews.org/article/mountains-saturn-moon-may-have-come-from-space … Yes, mountains made out of space debris – on a moon of Saturn (but what is good for the goose might also be good for the gander) – could it have happened on Earth?
It refers to a ridge on Iapetus with very steep slopes. Could material falling from space stack up and form such a mountainous area? Rings around Iapetus, possibly an assumption, lies at the root of the new theory. If such rings had existed could they have dumped a lot of material on Iapetus? Funny thing, but Moe Mandelkehr suggested there were rings around the Earth on occasions in the past (most notably at around 2300BC). These, he thought, were short lived affairs and mostly composed of dust left behind by heavy meteoric activity. One of his articles in SIS Review explored such a possibility – and how it might have impacted with myth and legend.
William Thompson suggests a different origin. It seems that Don Patten thought two mountain chains on Earth had been pulled up by the gravitational attraction of an astral visitor. Might something similar have happened to Iapetus?