The moon may have formed in just five hours, new simulations suggest
The moon may have formed in as few as five hours after the cataclysmic collision between Earth and a long-lost protoplanet, new simulations suggest. The surprising findings could help shed light on other historic impacts throughout our cosmic neighborhood and beyond.
Experts strongly suspect that the moon was created when a Mars-size space rock called Theia smashed into an early version of our planet, back when the solar system was young and extremely unstable. This colossal impact likely would have turned the once-neighboring worlds into spinning clumps of molten rock that eventually coalesced and cooled into the versions of Earth and the moon we see today. Without this collision, which also may have left chunks of Theia buried deep within our planet, many scientists think that life may have never existed on Earth.
Lunar rocks collected during NASA’s Apollo missions have provided evidence to support this theory, dubbed the giant impact hypothesis. These samples also tell us that the moon is around 4.5 billion years old, meaning the collision occurred roughly 100 million years after the sun was born. But although scientists have previously simulated the impact event, it has been tricky to ascertain exactly how the moon formed and how long it took to emerge after the Earth-Theia collision. [Continue reading…]