#moon formation

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NASA Simulations of Collisions to Early Earth Show Metal Deposits

Planetary collisions are at the core of our solar system’s formation. Scientists have long believed that after the Moon’s formation, the early Earth experienced a long period of bombardment that diminished about 3.8 billion years ago.

(NASA)  During this period, called “late accretion,” collisions with moon-sized planetary bodies, known as planetesimals, embedded extensive amounts of metal and rock-forming minerals into the Earth's mantle and crust. It is estimated that approximately 0.5 percent of Earth’s present mass was delivered during this stage of planetary evolution.

With the support from a NASA Exobiology grant and NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, or SSERVI, researchers at the Southwest Research Institute, or SwRI, and University of Maryland have created high-resolution impact simulations that show significant portions of a large planetesimal’s core could penetrate all the way down to merge with Earth’s core—or ricochet back into space and escape the planet entirely.

For a recently published paper in Nature Geoscience about the topic, Simone Marchi and his colleagues found evidence of more massive accretion onto the Earth than previously thought after the Moon’s formation. The mantle abundances of certain trace elements such as platinum, iridium and gold, which tend to bond chemically with metallic iron, are much higher than what would be expected to result from core formation. This discrepancy can most easily be explained by late accretion after core formation was complete. The team determined the total amount of material delivered to Earth may have been 2-5 times greater than previously thought, and the impacts altered Earth in a profound way while depositing familiar elements like gold.

“These results have far-reaching implications for Moon-forming theories and beyond,” said Marchi. “Interestingly, our findings elucidate the role of large collisions in delivering precious metals like gold and platinum found here on Earth.”

Image: Artist concept shows the collision of a large moon-sized planetary body penetrating all the way down to the Earth's core, with some particles ricocheting back into space.

Credits: Southwest Research Institute/Simone Marchi

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[mindblowingscience]

A New Study Is Challenging What We Thought We Knew About How the Moon Formed

One impact or many?

Currently, the leading hypothesis of the creation of the Moon is that it formed from a giant impact between a very early Earth and another Mars-sized planet.

Yet new research from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel has put forward a hypothesis that the Moon may have actually formed from a series of large impacts, rather than just one.

The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, explains why the Moon appears to be made mostly from Earth-like materials, rather than a mixture of our elements and those of another mystery planet.

Lead author Dr Raluca Rufu and her colleagues conducted some mathematical simulations of what it would look like if large planetary bodies collided with our Earth way back when it was newly formed around 4.5 billion years ago.

In these tests, the impacts produced disks that shot off from Earth and the other body, but were mostly made up from Earth materials.

According to their results, it would take about 20 of these collisions to assemble the moon. Rufu told Business Insider that it is much more likely that the Moon formed from many smaller collisions, because it is a more organic process.

"The multiple impact scenario is a more 'natural' way of explaining the formation of the Moon," Rufu said.

"In the early stages of the Solar System, impacts were very abundant, therefore it is more natural that several common impactors formed the Moon, rather than one special one."

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New Moon Alert Earth Captures Mysterious Cosmic Companion!

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Crystals brought back by Apollo astronauts indicate true age of the moon

More than four billion years ago a giant object the size of Mars crashed into the Earth, causing a piece to break off of the early Earth and

Crystals brought back by Apollo astronauts in 1972 suggest the moon is 40 million years older than scientists thought, according to new research. More than four billion years ago a giant object the size of Mars crashed into the Earth, causing a piece to break off of the early Earth and form the moon. Exactly when this happened has remained a mystery, but researchers have now used these crystals to pinpoint the time of the satellite’s formation. Their discovery pushes back the age of the moon by 40 million years, to at least 4.46 billion years old.

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