The MoonAccording to a new study, the possibility that the Earth could have formed after a massive impact that tore away a piece of Earth and hurled it into outer space is possible.
Astronomers believe that the Milky Way is a reality since the mid-1970s. MoonCould have been caused by collision between EarthA very ancient one MarsTheia is a protoplanet of the same size as Earth. The massive impact would have left an immense debris field, from which our lunar friend slowly formed over thousands years.
Based on supercomputer simulations, however, a new hypothesis suggests that the Moon’s creation may have not been a slow, gradual process, but rather occurred in a matter of hours.
The journal published the scientists’ findings on October 4. The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Related: NASA reports that 2 craters were left by a mystery rocket that crashed into Moon.
“What we have learnt is that it is very hard to predict how much resolution you need to simulate these violent and complex collisions reliably – you simply have to keep testing until you find that increasing the resolution even further stops making a difference to the answer you get,” Jacob Kegerreis, a computational cosmologist at Durham University in England, told Live Science.
Scientists discovered the Moon’s creation in July 1969 when Neil Armstrong and NASA astronauts returned from the Apollo 11 mission. Buzz AldrinThe lunar rock and dust weighed 47.6 lbs (21.6 kg) when it was brought back to Earth.
These samples were dated to approximately 4.5 billion years ago. This puts the Moon’s creation around 150 million years after formation of the solar system.
Others indicate that the largest natural satellite we have was born from a collision of Earth and a hypothetical world, which scientists named after the mythic Greek. titan Theia – the mother of Selene, goddess of the Moon.
These evidence include similarities in the compositions of lunar and Earth rock; Earth’s spin having similar orientations to the Moon’s orbit; high combined angular momentum between the two bodies; and existence of debris disks elsewhere within our solar system.
It is still unclear how this cosmic collision took place. The most common theory is that Theia collided with Earth and shattered it into millions of pieces. This would have left Theia as floating rubble.
Theia’s fragmented remains and some vaporized gas and rocks from our young planet’s crust slowly mingled together to create a disk in which the molten Moon sphere coalesced. It cooled over millions years.
But there are parts that remain unclear. One question that remains is: Why, if Theia is the Moon’s main component, are so many of its rocks strikingly similar to those on Earth?
Some scientists suggest that more of Earth’s vaporized rocks were used to create the Moon than Theia’s pulverized remains did. But this idea comes with its own problems. Other models also suggest that a Moon made mostly from disintegrated Earth rock would have an entirely different orbit than what we see today.
The authors of the new study turned to SPH With Interdependent Fine-grained Tacting (SWIFT) to explore different scenarios for Moon formation after the collision. This program is specifically designed to simulate the complex and changing web of gravitational, hydrodynamic and other forces that interact with large amounts of matter.
It is not easy to do so accurately. The scientists used a supercomputer called COSMA (short form for “cosmology computer”) at Durham University’s Distributed Research Utilising Advanced Computing facility.
The lunar sleuths were capable of modeling the aftermath of the astronomical cracked-up by using COSMA to simulate hundreds Earth/Theia collisions with various angles, spins and speeds.
These simulations have a fixed resolution due to the number of particles used. Kegerreis says that the standard resolution for simulations of huge impacts is between 100,000 and 1,000,000 particles. But, he and his colleagues were able, according to Kegerreis to model up to 100,000,000 particles in their new study.
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“With a higher resolution we can study more detail – much like how a larger telescope lets you take higher resolution images of distant planets or galaxiesKegerreis stated that they were excited to learn more details.
He added that “secondly, and perhaps more importantly, too low of a resolution in simulations can give you misleading answers or simply wrong answers.”
It is possible to imagine how a car might crash if it was made from toy blocks. If you have only a few dozen blocks, the car could just break down in the middle. However, if you increase the number of blocks to a few hundred or millions, it might begin to crumple and break in a more realistic manner.
The researchers created a Moon from the fragments of Earth’s ejected chunks and Theia’s shattered pieces. The simulation provided a single-stage formation theory which offered a simple and elegant explanation for the Moon’s visible characteristics, including its narrow orbit and tilted interior.
However, the researchers will have to examine rock and dust samples excavated from deep beneath the Moon’s surface – an objective of NASA’s future Artemis missions – before they can confirm how mixed its mantle could be.
Kegerreis stated, “Even more samples of the Moon’s surface could be extremely useful for making new and more certain discoveries about the Moons composition and its evolution, which can then be traced back to model simulations such as ours.”
“Missions, studies like these and many other help us to rule out additional possibilities and narrow down on the actual history both of the Moon and Earth. We also learn more about the formation of planets throughout the solar system.”
These investigations may also shed light on the origins of Earth and its transformation into a planet that is conducive to life.
Vincent Eke (associate professor of Physics at Durham University) said, “The more we understand about how the Moon came into being, the more information we uncover about the evolution of Earth.”Statement. “Their histories are intertwined – and could be echoed in the stories of other planets changed by similar or very different collisions.”
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This article was first published in Live Science. Please read the Original article available here.
