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Remnants of Theia, an ancient planet that collided with the Earth
- turtleyacht 3y agoIf the moon originated from impact, how is it a sphere? It would be interesting to see the computational modeling for that. Maybe the Earth was hot enough to kind of re-melt the proto-moon as it careened away, sort of repairing it, like two separating droplets of liquid.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> If the moon originated from impact, how is it a sphere? Anything in space that is sufficiently large will become a sphere, because gravity, and the moon is sufficiently large.
- gus_massa 3y agoIt's not my area, but this video looks interesting and is produced by NASA "New Supercomputer Simulation Sheds Light on Moon’s Origin" (October 2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRlhlCWplqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRlhlCWplqk
- turtleyacht 3y agoThank-you, that made me see how fluid the Earth and Moon would be. The collision ripples through the Earth. Combined with the idea that different minerals can be formed from the same rock-stuff under the Earth's crust when it's hot enough, I see how there's a clear mixing of Very Hot Material. As it cools, maybe enough bulk is re-incorporated together to become those blobs--Large, Low-Velocity Provinces (LLVP)--that were detected.
- ahazred8ta 3y agoIf you do the math, the kinetic energy of the collision was so large that all of the material was liquified or vaporized during the collision. It splattered into a ring shape and the blobs eventually merged to form the moon, which took a long time to solidify. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synestia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synestia
- turtleyacht 3y agoThank-you. Synestia looks like something we can compare with this other idea.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]