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And bref: The Moon is a staple of the night sky, but have you ever wondered how it was born? Researchers have been asking this question for decades, and a new simulation adds an interesting wrinkle to the debate.
A leading theory suggests that ancient Earth was hit by an object called Theia that was roughly the size of Mars. It was previously believed that debris from the collision came together in orbit for months or years to create our satellite.
The new simulations were run at the highest resolution of any simulation used to study the Moon’s origins and suggest the branching might have taken shape within hours of impact. The high resolution simulations also revealed new behaviors and details that were simply not evident with the lower resolution models.
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Vincent Eke, a researcher at Durham University who helped co-author the study, to say the more we learn regarding the birth of the Moon, the more we discover regarding the evolution of the Earth. The moon rock samples have isotopic signatures very similar to rocks here on Earth, suggesting that the material that makes up the Moon may have originated here.
Theia might also have been isotopically similar to Earth, but that would be an unlikely coincidence. The new simulation provides a plausible explanation for why the isotopic signatures are so similar, and might also explain other oddities like the Moon’s tiled orbit and thin crust.
Jacob Kegerreis, postdoctoral fellow at NASA Ames Research Center and principal investigator of the study, said the simulations open up a whole new range of possible starting points for the Moon’s evolution. Or, it might be just a hollow man-made structure brought here by someone else for an unknown purpose.
The team paper was published dans The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
NASA said additional analyzes of future lunar samples, such as those expected to be brought back from Artemis missions, will help clarify which theories regarding the origin of the Moon are correct.
Image credit: Michele Raffoni