The sudden birth of the Moon

1998/03/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astronomia

Our satellite was formed by fragments of the earth's orbit for a year. This is the main consequence of a simulation carried out by American and Japanese researchers. The research comes to detail the current theory on the origin of the Moon. According to this theory, a large body collided with Earth and raised part of its surface forming a disk of gas and dust around our planet.

Likewise, according to these researchers, the sum of the fragments of the Moon was not very effective. In fact, only 15-40% of the fragments were added and the rest fell back to Earth.

If all these simulations are correct, the body that hit Earth 4,500 million years ago was greater than Mars, and this is not very common in the creation of planets. Therefore, the Earth-Moon system should be considered as an exceptional system.