Since ancient times, our fascinating, mystifying and beautiful Moon has been the enchanting source of wild, weird and wonderful myths and tales, as well as an inspiration for poetry, a fantastic source of madness and a symbol for romantic love. However, Earth’s Moon is a very real near world: the largest object in our sky at night, as well as our closest neighbor in space. But how did our great Moon come about? Cloaked like our Moon in its alluring cloak of mystery, humanity has long tried to understand how this enchanting and fascinating object came to be. In January 2017, a team of planetary scientists announced their new theory explaining the primordial origins of our lunar companion, proposing that the Moon we now observe shining in our night sky is not Earth’s first Moon, but the last. in a long lost series of primordial moons that orbited our planet in the distant past when our Solar System was young.
This latest theory about the birth of our Moon was proposed by a team of researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and was published on January 9, 2017 in the magazine Geosciences of nature.
The new theory, proposed by researchers Dr. Hagai Perets, of the Technion Y Weizmann InstitutesDr. Raluca Rufu (lead author) and Dr. Oded Aharonson, differs from the most favored giant impact model suggesting that Earth’s Moon was born as a single object that formed as a result of a single collision between a Mars-sized object protoplanet named tea and our Earth still in formation.
“Our model suggests that ancient Earth once hosted a series of moons, each formed from a different collision with proto-Earth. It is likely that such moons were later ejected, or collided with Earth or with each other to form larger moons,” Dr. Perets explained in a January 9, 2017 Technion press release.
To understand the conditions necessary to form many primordial moons, in orbit around our still-forming proto-Earth, scientists ran 800 supercomputer simulations of impacts that might have occurred in the early Solar System with our planet.
The madman, the lover and the poet
Our beautiful, resplendent, golden Moon has haunted the collective imagination of our species for eons. Some ancient and traditional myths and stories, as well as classic children’s fairy tales, mention the existence of a man’s face engraved on the shining disc of our lunar companion, while others tell beautiful and haunting stories of a “Moon Rabbit” . An ancient symbol of what is feminine, Earth’s Moon has been with us almost since the beginning, when our Sun and its family of familiar objects first formed some 4.56 billion years ago. It is also the only object beyond our Earth that humanity has walked on, leaving lingering footprints in the moondust, a legacy that tells any observer there may be, originating from anywhere in space and time, that a Human beings once existed on our planet, and that we had the ability and curiosity to explore space.
There are more than 100 moons in orbit around the eight main planets that inhabit our Solar System. Most of them are small, icy worlds that contain only a relatively small amount of rocky material. These distant myriad of icy moons circle the quartet of majestic, gas giant planets that inhabit the cold, dimly lit outer regions of our Solar System. In these distant regions, far from the bright light and melting heat of our Sun, these icy worlds spin in a beautiful ballet around their parent planets. The four magnificent gas giants at the outer reaches of our Solar System (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) are covered by dense, heavy shells of gas, and are accompanied by their orbiting entourage of many frozen and twinkling, dancing, icy moons. . moons
In dramatic contrast, the inner region of our Solar System, where our Earth is located, is almost entirely devoid of moons. Of the quartet of relatively small rocky worlds (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), Mercury and Venus have no lunar children, and Mars is surrounded by two very small, misshapen moons called phobos Y Deimoswhich are probably captured asteroids that migrated long ago from their original home in the hand asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. According to this model, phobos Y Deimos, during their journey away from their birthplace, they were trapped by the gravity of the Red Planet when our Solar System was still young. In the warm and brightly lit inner Solar System, only Earth’s fascinating Moon is a large and significant lunar world in its own right.
Moons are natural satellites that revolve around another body, which, in turn, is in orbit around its parent star. The moon is held in position by both the gravitational embrace of its parent planet and its own gravity. Some planets are orbited by moons, while others are not. Several asteroids are surrounded by very small moons and some Tiny planets–like Pluto–they also have moons. One of Pluto’s quintet of moons, Charon, is about 50% the size of Pluto. Many planetary scientists think that Charon is actually a large chunk of Pluto that was torn off in a violent collision with another violent object a long time ago. Because Charon is nearly half the size of Pluto, the two small worlds are often thought of as one. double planet.
Our Moon is the only permanent natural satellite of the Earth. It is also the fifth largest moon in our Solar System and the largest among planetary satellites relative to the size of the parent planet it orbits. After the innermost of Jupiter Galilean Moon, Io, Earth’s Moon is the densest satellite among those whose densities have been determined. Tea galilean moons Jupiter–Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto–are relatively large natural satellites that were discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galileo, and were eventually named in honor of their discoverer.
The average distance of the Moon from Earth to our planet is about 238,900 miles, or 1.28 light seconds. Our Moon is believed to have been born about 4.51 billion years ago, according to a recent study, not long after the formation of our planet in the primordial Solar System. Our Moon is in synchronous rotation with the Earth, always showing the same side, with the near side notable for its hauntingly beautiful dark volcanic color. Maria (Latin for seas) lying between prominent impact craters and bright, ancient crustal highlands. The surface of our Moon is actually dark, although compared to Earth’s night sky it appears to be very bright, with a slightly higher reflectance than old asphalt. Its prominent place in Earth’s sky, as well as its regular cycle of phases, have made our closest companion in space a valuable cultural influence since ancient times in mythology, art, calendars, and language.
The Moon’s gravitational influence on our planet creates ocean tides, body tides, and the slight lengthening of Earth’s day. The Moon’s current orbital distance is about thirty times the diameter of Earth, with its apparent size in the sky nearly equal to that of our Sun. This is why it almost completely blocks out our Sun during a total solar eclipse.
Several theories have been proposed that try to explain how the Moon was born from the Earth. However, so far, the Giant impact hypothesis it is generally considered to be the most credible explanation for the lunar formation. According to this theory, when the doomed tragedy was the size of Mars protoplanet named tea, crashed into primordial Earth billions of years ago, the huge, violent and catastrophic collision resulted in a portion of the ancient Earth’s crust being shot into space. It is believed that this explosion in our planet’s past sent a multitude of small moons shrieking like banshees into the sky above Earth, and some of this ejected material was eventually pulled together by gravity to become our fascinating, puzzling, and beautiful planet. Moon.
Tea Giant impact hypothesis it was first proposed eighteen months before an October 1984 conference on lunar origins. Dr. William Hartmann, Dr. Roger Phillips, and Dr. Jeffrey Taylor challenged other planetary scientists as follows: “You are eighteen months old. Go back to your Apollo data, go back to your computer, do what you have to do, but make up your mind. Don’t come to our conference unless you have something to say about the birth of the Moon.” At the 1984 conference, held in Kona, Hawaii, the Giant impact hypothesis prevailed as the best model.
In fact, giant impacts are thought to have been common in the ancient days of our Solar System. Computer simulations of a giant impact produced results consistent with the mass of the lunar core and the current angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system.
The many moons of the ancient earth
Although the giant impact model has long been the preferred explanation for the birth of the Moon, the new model proposed by the team of Israeli planetary scientists is consistent with current scientific understanding of the formation of our Earth. In the final stages of growth of our planet, it suffered a large number of giant impacts with other devastating bodies. Our early Solar System was a violent place, where primordial bodies collided with each other, sometimes breaking into many pieces as a result of catastrophic collisions; sometimes merging to create larger and larger objects. This chaotic mess of ancient collisions, occurring between storms of Solar System bodies, has inspired some planetary scientists to refer to our still-forming ancient Solar System as a “cosmic shooting gallery.”
Each of the numerous impacts of ancient objects, which collided with our newborn planet, contributed more and more of its material to the formation proto-earth–until it finally reached the size it is today.
“We think the Earth had many previous moons,” Dr. Peretz commented on January 9, 2017 Technion press release. He went on to explain that “therefore, a previously formed moon could exist when another giant moon-forming impact occurs.”
Tidal forces from our Earth could cause ancient moons to slowly drift outward, just as our current Moon is gradually receding at a leisurely rate of about 1 centimeter per year. A preexisting primordial moon could lazily migrate outward the moment a newer moon formed. Unfortunately, their mutual gravitational pull would ultimately and catastrophically force the moons to influence each other, thereby altering their orbits.
Dr. Rufu noted on January 9, 2017 Technion press release that “it is likely that the small moons formed through the process could cross orbits, collide and merge. A long series of such moon-moon collisions could gradually build up a larger moon, the Moon we see today.”
