Theories of The Origin of the Moon
Theories of The Origin of the MoonThe Moon is the only natural satellite of Earth. The distance from Earth
is about
384,400km with a diameter of 3476km and a mass of 7.35*1022kg. Through
history it has had many names: Called Luna by the Romans, Selene and
Artemis
by the Greeks. And of course, has been known through prehistoric times.
It is
the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun. Due to its size and
composition, the Moon is sometimes classified as a terrestrial “planet”
along with
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
Origin of the Moon
Before the modern age of space exploration, scientists had three major
theories for the origin of the moon: fission from the earth; formation in
earth
orbit; and formation far from earth. Then, in 1975, having studied moon
rocks
and close-up pictures of the moon, scientists proposed what has come to be
regarded as the most probable of the theories of formation, planetesimal
impact
or giant impact theory.
Formation by Fission from the Earth
The modern version of this theory proposes that the moon was spun off from
the earth when the earth was young and rotating rapidly on its axis. This
idea
gained support partly because the density of the moon is the same as that
of
the rocks just below the crust, or upper mantle, of the earth. A major
difficulty
with this theory is that the angular momentum of the earth, in order to
achieve
rotational instability, would have to have been much greater than the
angular
momentum of the present earth-moon system.
Formation in Orbit Near the Earth
This theory proposes that the earth and moon, and all other bodies of the
solar
system, condensed independently out of the huge cloud of cold gases and
solid
particles that constituted the primordial solar nebula. Much of this
material
finally collected at the center to form the sun.
Formation Far from Earth
According to this theory, independent formation of the earth and moon, as
in
the above theory, is assumed; but the moon is supposed to have formed at a
different place in the solar system, far from earth. The orbits of the
earth and
moon then, it is surmised, carried them near each other so that the moon
was
pulled into permanent orbit about the earth.
Planetesimal Impact
First published in 1975, this theory proposes that early in the earth’s
history,
well over 4 billion years ago, the earth was struck by a large body called
a
planetesimal, about the size of Mars. The catastrophic impact blasted
portions
of the earth and the planetesimal into earth orbit, where debris from the
impact
eventually coalesced to form the moon. This theory, after years of research
on
moon rocks in the 1970s and 1980s, has become the most widely accepted
one for the moon’s origin. The major problem with the theory is that it
would
seem to...
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