Posted on by Evan Gough

Earth is Hiding Another Planet Deep Inside

During an ancient collision, the protoplanet named Theia slammed into Earth, leading to the creation of the Moon. But it left some of its remains inside Earth. Image Credit: CalTech

Earth’s early history is marked by massive collisions with other objects, including planetesimals. One of the defining events in our planet’s history, the formation of the Moon, likely resulted from one of these catastrophic collisions when a Mars-sized protoplanet crashed into Earth. That’s the Giant Impact Hypothesis, and it explains how the collision produced a torus of debris rotating around the Earth that eventually coalesced into our only natural satellite.

New research strengthens the idea that Theia left some of its remains inside Earth.

Continue reading “Earth is Hiding Another Planet Deep Inside”
Posted on by Matt Williams

The Moon Might Have Formed a Little Later than Originally Believed

Credit: DLR

According to the Giant Impact Hypothesis, the Moon formed when a Mars-sized object (named Theia) collided with Earth billion years ago, at a time when the Earth was still a ball of magma. This event not only led to the Earth-Moon system we recognize today, it is also beleived to have led to the differentiation of the Earth’s core region into an molten Outer Core and a solid Inner Core.

However, there has been an ongoing debate as to the timing of this impact and how long the subsequent formation of the Moon took place. According to a new study by a team of German researchers, the Moon formed from a magma ocean that took up to 200 million years to solidify. This means that the Moon finished forming about 4.425 billion years ago, or 100 million years later than previously thought.

Continue reading “The Moon Might Have Formed a Little Later than Originally Believed”
Posted on by Evan Gough

That Explains a Lot. The Moon’s Largest Crater has a Chunk of Metal Embedded in it That’s 5 Times Bigger than the Big Island of Hawaii

A false-colour graphic of the far side of the Moon showing the impact crater. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/University of Arizona

One of the largest craters in the Solar System is on our Moon. It’s called the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin and it’s 2,500 km (1,600 mi) in diameter and 13 km (8.1 mi) deep. A new study says that the basin may contain an enormous chunk of metal that’s larger than Hawaii’s Big Island.

Continue reading “That Explains a Lot. The Moon’s Largest Crater has a Chunk of Metal Embedded in it That’s 5 Times Bigger than the Big Island of Hawaii”