Hello people, tune in each week of 2023 for the most effective in astronomy from Astronomy Editor Dave Eicher, delivered to you by Celestron.
This week, we’ll talk about the formation of Earth’s solely pure satellite, the Moon! After we search for on the evening sky, it is easy to see the Moon and assume it is at all times been there. However that is not the case.
About 4.5 billion years in the past, a Mars-sized physique known as Theia catastrophically struck Earth, throwing out a hoop of fabric that finally accreted into the Moon. (Theia is the identify of a Greek goddess who was the mom of one other Greek goddess, Selene, the Goddess of the Moon.)
We all know this collision occurred as a result of within the Seventies, two planetary astronomers — Invoice Hartmann and Don Davis — figured it out. They reached this conclusion largely by evaluating lunar rocks collected in the course of the Apollo missions to Earth rocks. They discovered that the isotopes (totally different types of the identical ingredient) in each rocks had been largely an identical, indicating they’d a typical origin.
This led to what’s now known as the Large Influence Speculation, which explains quite a lot of issues concerning the Earth-Moon system. These embody Earth’s spin, the Moon’s orbit, the excessive angular momentum of the system, the proof that the Moon was as soon as molten, the Moon’s small iron core, and, in fact, these isotopic similarities between Earth and Moon rocks.
If the Large Influence Speculation is true, then the subsequent logical query is to ask: “What occurred to Theia?” Effectively, you are standing on it now! Many of the Mars-sized impactor really bought absorbed into Earth. Fairly wild, proper?
For extra info on the Large Influence Speculation and the Moon’s formation, see right here: https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/11/the-moons-violent-origin
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