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Why does the Moon fall back to Earth at the end of the simulation?
by dessant 7y ago
Why does the Moon fall back to Earth at the end of the simulation?
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y agoAlso, if you play the animation slowly, you can see a brighter circle forming at the point of impact, before the impact. Is that part of the simulation or an artifact of the animation, I wonder?
- grenoire 7y agoI'm guessing it's the low energy light from the rendered sphere.
- magicalhippo 7y agoMy interpretation is that the surface magma, cooled down hence the dull orange, is blown away by the bow shock in the atmosphere from the other body entering the atmosphere. This exposes the hotter, brighter, underlying magma. Could of course be entirely wrong.
- mcherm 7y agoWouldn't that require an unreasonably thick atmosphere? Our current atmosphere is only around 10 miles high. (Obviously, it all depends on what you consider as your cutoff.)
- magicalhippo 7y agoPossibly, I'm no expert. I didn't think about timescale though, the bow shock would require very short timescale (if at all plausible like you said). If it happens on longer timescales, then maybe it's just surface heating from the emission of the other body.
- Rexxar 7y agoGravity that attract mater imho (and make hot matter go on surface). There is another effect : the incoming moon is not a sphere any more before impact.
- noname120 7y agoFrom the article: > During Earth’s earliest days, it was covered by a sheet of molten silicate rock. Dr. Hosono’s team wondered what would have happened if Theia had crashed into Earth at that time, rather than during a later, cooler, more solid phase. This is the simulation of how a moon could have been formed, this is not supposed to represent the formation of the actual Moon.
- wcoenen 7y ago> This is the simulation of how a moon could have been formed The animation doesn't show a moon in a stable orbit forming, so obviously it doesn't even show how it could have happened.