Earth Archives - The Silver Ink

Moon formation was always a controversial issue with no sufficient information which can validate any claim.

It is long believed that the moon was formed by the collision between Earth and Theia which is a Mars like protoplanet.

The new study suggests that the planet Theia is similar to Earth in size and composition.

Hagai Perets, study co-author and astrophysicists at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa said, “The Earth and the moon are not twins born from the same planet, but they are sisters in the sense that they grew up in the same environment.”

It is known that the composition of Earth and Moon is very similar but the chances of Earth having a primordial twin are very less and is equal to none so there was a problem in understanding the formation of moon.

Alessandra Matrobuono-Batisti, lead author of the study said, “For some 30 years this contradiction was a major challenge to physicists grappling with the formation of the moon, the hope was that better simulations might resolve this issues, but it turned out that the progress with simulations gave essentially the same results, giving rise to the ‘isotope crisis,’ as this problem came to be called.”

The team used a newly developed computer model to analyze planetary collision possibilities. This new model simulates the early solar system which is full of would be planets around 85 to 90 planetary embryos and 1,000 to 2,000 planetesimals.

When the scientists started the simulation they realized collision and sibling formation are more common than previously believed.

Matrobuono-Batisti said, “On average, impactors are more similar to the planets they impact compared with different planets in the same system.”

A similar research showed that the sibling planet wouldn’t have had to be exactly the same in their composition.

Different model explained that how two differently composed planets could combine to form material boasting the same tungsten isotopic composition.

The result of the study shows that the early solar system was a violent place and it gives little more understanding about the Earth Moon relationship.

Putting light the formation of the Moon, a group of scientists from the University of Maryland generated a new isotope-based fingerprint of the Earth’s satellite suggesting that both our planet and its Moon were formed from the same alien body.

The isotopic fingerprint is the geological equivalent of a fingerprint of DNA.

So far, the astronomers and planetary science experts have believed that a massive body approximately the size of red planet ‘Mars’ struck and merged with the Earth within the first 150 million years of the formation of our solar system, triggering explosion of a huge cloud of debris and rock into the space.

According to the scientists, this cloud ultimately combined together and led to the formation of the Moon.

Richard Walker, study co-author and a geology professor, said, “Both Earth and Moon are very similar to each other with respect to their isotopic fingerprints. This suggests that they both are ultimately formed from the same material that gathered early in the history of our solar system.”

Walker called the findings surprising as the Mars-sized celestial body behind the creation of the Moon is likely to have been very different.

“So the conundrum is that both celestial bodies should not be as similar as they are,” he asserted.

The results support the idea that the mass of a material created due to the impact, which later led to the formation of the Moon, should have mixed together wholly before the Earth’s satellite coalesced and cooled.

The study also rules out the idea that the red planet-sized body shared similar composition, or that it was the pre-impact Earth that led to the formation of the Moon.

Concluding the study, the research authors said, “The findings bring us a step closer to better understanding the close familial relationship between the Moon and the Earth. We still require to work out the details… However, it is clear that our early solar system was a very violent place.”

The findings of the study were published in the journal Nature.

Colliosion with Earth’s twin sister Theia created the Moon

Both Earth and Moon formed of same material: Scientists

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