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Birth of the Moon: a Runaway Nuclear Reaction?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the that's-not-no-moon dept.

An anonymous reader writes "How the Moon arose has long stumped scientists. Now Dutch geophysicists argue that it was created not by a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago, but by a runaway nuclear reaction deep inside the young Earth."

2 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. Wouldn't there be an empty space? by mnslinky · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wouldn't there be evidence of this on the surface somewhere? I know the crust has shifted considerably, but that's a *lot* of material to suddenly vacate.

    1. Re:Wouldn't there be an empty space? by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Everyone who has replied so far makes fair points, but misses the biggest point: the Moon is over 4 billion years old. There are virtually no rocks on the Earth's surface that even approach its age. That means that the ENTIRE Earth's surface has been replaced and reshaped in the interim. Things haven't just "shifted considerably", we've got a totally different surface. Any scar from that period is long, long since erased. And hole as deep as the Moon has long since filled in since the Earth is still very much a fluid over these timescales.