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.