Oct 4, 2022 11:22 PM
(This post was last modified: Oct 4, 2022 11:47 PM by Yazata.)
The Apollo Moon missions discovered that Lunar rocks have a very similar isotopic signature to Earth rocks. This is best explained by the hypothesis that the Moon was originally part of the Earth. That leaves the problem of how part of the Earth got up there in space. The prevailing theory is that the very early Earth was struck by a Mars sized planet in a giant cosmic collision and the Moon congealed gravitationally out of material that was knocked off. But that idea raised the question of how the Moon got into such a high and stable orbit.
Besides being visually striking, a new simulation shows how two big globs of Earth might have been knocked off, with a larger one gravitationally propelling a smaller one into a higher orbit, before the bigger one crashed back into the Earth.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/lunar-...imulations
If you think that the dinosaurs had a bad day 600 million years ago, this was a really bad here day on Earth. A planet-killer x1000. The Earth would have been turned into a very energetic ball of molten liquid and it would have experienced multiple impacts as much of its mass (and the mass of the planet that hit it) crashed back down. The question that I have is how long it took for the Earth to recover to the point it becomes round again and for it to develop a solid crust where conditions conducive to the formation of life might have existed.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/kRlhlCWplqk
Besides being visually striking, a new simulation shows how two big globs of Earth might have been knocked off, with a larger one gravitationally propelling a smaller one into a higher orbit, before the bigger one crashed back into the Earth.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/lunar-...imulations
If you think that the dinosaurs had a bad day 600 million years ago, this was a really bad here day on Earth. A planet-killer x1000. The Earth would have been turned into a very energetic ball of molten liquid and it would have experienced multiple impacts as much of its mass (and the mass of the planet that hit it) crashed back down. The question that I have is how long it took for the Earth to recover to the point it becomes round again and for it to develop a solid crust where conditions conducive to the formation of life might have existed.
