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Findings Cast Doubt On Moon Origins
sciencehabit writes "A new analysis of isotopes found in lunar minerals challenges the prevailing view of how Earth's nearest neighbor formed. Geochemists looked at titanium isotopes in 24 separate samples of lunar rock and soil, and found that the moon's proportion was effectively the same as Earth's and different from elsewhere in the solar system. This contradicts the so-called Giant Impact Hypothesis, which posits that Earth collided with a hypothetical, Mars-sized planet called Theia early in its existence, and the resulting smash-up produced a disc of magma orbiting our planet that later coalesced to form the moon."
That's no moon!
That's no moon.
We have the technology to find and look very deep or far where isotopes are or where the fartest solar system is. But yet, I can't find my damn keys in my house sometimes.
So, if it wasn't a big impact, what was it? What's the next best theory?
"We are not brothers, hanger-on..."
['ruff for cartoon]
It doesn't contradict it at all. The current version of the impactor theory pre-supposes that Theia was formed at Earth's L4 or L5 point. There, the fractional distillation effect in the solar nebula would give the same Ti isotope ratios as in Earth, since Theia would be orbiting at the same distance. Formation at L4 or L5 also gives a nicely low impact energy, agreeing with what is needed to form the moon.
The moon was put here by extra terrestrials for the sole purpose of spying on our corn fields.
"Geochemists looked at titanium isotopes in 24 separate samples of lunar rock and soil, and found that the moon's proportion was effectively the same as Earth's and different from elsewhere in the solar system"
and
" This contradicts the so-called Giant Impact Hypothesis, which posits that Earth collided with a hypothetical, Mars-sized planet called Theia early in its existence, and the resulting smash-up produced a disc of magma orbiting our planet that later coalesced to form the moon."
SO discovering that the Moon's and Earths isotopes match means it could NOT have formed from a splash of magma from the earth?
This whole thing contradicts it's self. How do they know that the other body was not a twin of the earth and formed from the same disc of dust and debris? do they have samples of this other planet?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Conclusion sounds good, written logic is horrible.
found that the moon's proportion was effectively the same as Earth's
This contradicts the so-called Giant Impact Hypothesis, which posits that Earth collided with a hypothetical, Mars-sized planet called Theia early in its existence, and the resulting smash-up produced a disc of magma orbiting our planet that later coalesced to form the moon.
Does not explain why that doesn't work. The summary makes it sound very likely that something "smooshed off" the earth and became the moon, because both have the same ratios. Also does a poor job of explaining the more likely alternative explanation, by not discussing it at all. Fail.
I think part of the fail is assuming:
different from elsewhere in the solar system
That means we've sampled everything in the entire solar system both now and infinitely in the past? ha ha I think not.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Is there evidence to suggest that the simplest explanation (accretion disk formed the earth and the moon at roughly the same time, along with all the other rocky planets) is not the correct one? I honestly can't remember, it would be nice for someone more knowledgeable than I to set me straight. We seem to be obsessed with "fantastic" explanations, maybe because we are trying to get folks interested in science. The simple explanation is still pretty friggin' interesting to me.
I don't see how this contradicts anything. If a mars sized body impacted the earth, I doubt there was much that wasn't rendered into magma and mixed together.
What is this i dont even
That's what I read on the Internet.
This is just too awesome man!
It's times like this that I'm happy to be a creationist.
From the article: "[...]and the researchers aren't claiming to have refuted the giant impact hypothesis."
You know how you can tell astronomy is a real science? The people doing it are willing to look at new evidence... even if it casts doubt on their current beliefs.
If you see people in a field of "science" doing any of the above, it's not science but something else entirely.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1429.html
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
What a bunch of rubes! http://www.revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisionist.htm
They missed the obvious explanation: namely that the "24 separate samples of lunar rock and soil" are actually "24 separate samples of earth rock and soil", much like the petrified wood fiasco
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
The moon is only 6 thousand years old. And Yahweh(God) created it. The Bible is true and scientifically accurate.
“For this they are willingly ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgement and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness: but is long suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. II Peter 3:5-9
Many people don't want the Bible to be true because that means there is Someone to be accountable to and these people want to live their lives however they please.
“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith... I Timothy 6:20-21
www.truthsjourney.com
How can they test moon rocks when we all know that the moon landing was a hoax!
In all scientific fields, some theories are more supported by facts than others, thus they are more likely than others.
This is also the case for astronomy.
Here is an example where those who choose to ignore mountains of facts in order to deny the most supported theories are called deniers by astronomers:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/09/im-skeptical-of-denialism/
I am innocent I did not do it...God done it!
Recent re-analysis of lunar volcanic samples shows the interior of the Moon is allot wetter then we thought. Some parts of the Moon interior, at least, contain as much water as the Earth's upper mantle, far wetter than predicted by the Giant Impact Hypothesis (the water should have boiled off).
Less sophisticated analysis in the 1970s indicated the Moon is very dry (less than 50 parts per million water). But water was lost to the vacuum of space during lunar volcanic eruptions, giving a false impression the Moon was dry. New techniques detected water trapped inside fluid inclusions (bubbles) in olivine crystals, showing the interior of the moon is quite wet. Zhang at al. 2012 is one of several resent studies that calls the Giant Impact Hypothesis into question.
Hauri et al., 2011. "High Pre-Eruptive Water Contents Preserved in Lunar Melt Inclusions" 333(6039), 213-215.
Mild-mannered high school student, Luna Selene was attending a presentation on radioactivity at New York University when she was bitten by an irradiated moon!
...Sorry but if find this far more convincing than a bunch of scientists doing what amounts to guessing. Look at the quality...plus it was on tele, twice!
Wasn't the origin of the moon already covered in "The Fifth Element"?
~werd~
If Theia was in roughly the same orbit (one explanation of why they collided), it's entirely possible that the Earth and Theia shared very similar compositions, thus, the resulting Moon also was made of the same stuff. It's not rocket surgery. But go ahead, argue amongst yourselves. There will be a 20 minute break at 4:00pm for tea and crumpets.
While everyone is talking about the moon, I once read about a creationist explanation about it and I was wondering how does the recession compare?
Is the math correct? That the moon would be in the Roche limit in only 1.3 GA?
http://creation.com/the-moons-recession-and-age
Sorry I am not trolling, I am just curious about the math presented in that article. Is that formula correct? or are there any mistakes?
Shouldn't the headline say "Findings Cast Doubt On Current Moon Origin theories"?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Have we detected the impactor, on the earth or on the moon? If we haven't then it is eminently plausible that the impactor had the same composition as the earth/moon. Or is there a way to suppose that after this collision, all of the mass of the impactor remained separate from the thing it impacted, which became the earth and the moon? Maybe we got hit by dark matter? I think the conclusions are running way ahead of the facts here.
o.O
Bill O'Reilly was right! We can't explain it!
Do you think that "some theories are more supported by facts than other theories" ?
If yes then you have to accept the right of climate scientists to say that "some climate theories are more supported by facts than other climate theories".
The IPCC reports acknowledge that other theories could be right in the end, that is why they use the word "likely" for their predictions instead of saying "we are certain that...".
So calling the IPCC reports "religious" is clearly a mistake. No religion uses the word "likely" for its beliefs.
What about a double impact? The first one creates the vast majority of the moon. When the moon eventually cools enough, a second high-velocity impact kicks up Earth material which eventually lands on the moon's surface. Any samples from the moon's surface would be mostly from the second impact. The second impact would kick up more of Earth and less of itself than the first because it would be a high-speed impact.
My understanding is that a fairly low-speed impact is necessary to kick up sufficient "solid" mass, and thus the majority of the moon's mass would probably be from such. However, the surface of the moon may have been re-coated via a smaller, speedier impact. Our samples come from the surface (assuming moon cooled enough before 2nd impact.) A speedier (2nd) impact would kick up more of Earth as a percentage (versus impactor volume) than a slow impact I believe, and thus the surface isotopes would resemble Earth.
Table-ized A.I.
I was expecting an Earth-shattering kaboom!
I thought it was given that the moon was part of the earth. Look at a map of pangea and the "rabbit in the moon". Genesis describes a terraforming operation.
how the Moon was formed. It is not the so-called Giant Impact Hypothesis. It is called the Giant Impact Hypothesis and that's what it is an hypothesis, not a theory. It doesn't cast any doubt on the Moon's origins. It is a strike against the GIH. It just means that scientists have to come up with a new idea of how it was formed. Now this isotopic analysis will help to formulate a new hypothesis and even theory about the Moon's origin.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
If you deny that "some theories are more supported by facts than other theories", you are a denier.
If you deny that "some climate theories are more supported by facts than other climate theories", you are a denier.
If you deny climate scientists the right to say that "some climate theories are more supported by facts than other climate theories", you are a denier.
A denier of science.
http://web.archive.org/web/20100615055048/http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/WHAT_REALLY_KILLED_THE_DINOSAURS.html "CHAPTER FIVE: The K-T Event 65 Million Years Ago In Chapter Four, we left the earth spinning so rapidly that the rocky continental lithosphere had formed a thick belt or ring around the equator of the solid core of the earth. As the earth spun faster and faster the net gravitational force along the equator, which is the downward non-spinning gravity force minus the upward centrifugal spinning force, soon approaches zero. Then about 65 million years ago, a large portion of that thick belt of land around the equator had less than zero gravity. Then the only thing holding it to the earth was the mechanical adhesion of the thick fluid lava layer called the asthenosphere. Then it simply overcame that sticky adhesion, something like unzipping a huge strip of Velcro around the equator, and it floated off into space. That three fourths of the thick rocky ring around the earth carried with it a large amount of the rapidly spinning earth's energy in the form of angular momentum. It spiraled outward and was so large that it formed into a sphere by its own gravity and became what is today called the moon. A LITTLE MATH GOES A LONG WAY: Happy Birthday Moon To prove that, let's do a little math. If the earth spins at 24 hours per day, as it does today, then the force of gravity at the equator is about the same as the force of gravity at the north and south poles. If the earth spins faster, in about a 12 hour revolution day, then the force of gravity at the equator is around half of what it would be at the poles. And if the earth spins around in about 7 hours, then the force of gravity becomes rather close to zero at the equator, while the force at the poles remains the same. There are several planets and moons in the solar system which rotate about that fast. It merely indicates how long the body in space has been cooling and shrinking. Rapid spinning is a normal part of planet and moon evolution, and is caused by the body shrinking with age and the principle of Conservation of Angular Momentum (CAM). With another quick calculation we can find the volume of the missing three quarters of the rocky continents of earth. Simply take three fourths of the surface area of the earth and multiply that by 37 miles, or the average depth to the hot molten fluid asthenosphere where the separation took place. That volume of the three fourths of the surface material missing from the earth's rocky layer is exactly equal to the volume of the moon. And that calculation also shows the two volumes are exactly the same with an accuracy of about one percent. Amazing. "
I can't RTFOR because the link on TFA goes nowhere, but what percent of the Earth's mass would also be from the impactor? My limited understanding was that the impact caused a large amount of the two bodies to go into orbit around the Earth, where some of it coalesced into the moon and the rest settled back down on the Earth. Why should there be a difference?
Gaia got sick of her kid living in the basement and kicked him/her (does the moon have a gender?) out. But only to the backyard.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
What if the moon was formed at the same time as the earth, and their collision "cleared the path" for Earth to become a planet.
I could see the moon traveling just a bit faster than earth and it comes up on it's back side, but it may take a few million years to catch up to the Earth ( if it is only moving a fraction faster than Earth's speed).
Just a thought.
If you deny that "everything lgw says is true" then you are a denier. Because shut up.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's amazing how they somehow figured out the name of the planet Theia, even though it was destroyed billions of years ago! How'd they do that? Go science!
Earth (the "third" plannet) single moon is an artificial creation
as evidenced by synchronous rotation....the sams side always faces Earth.
Who controls it and what is its purpose ?
I don't get how the similar isotope composition of moon samples and the earth rule out the Giant Impact by Theia. Say the Earth is floating around alone (before the moon is there). It has a unique set of Ti isotopes in its composition. Nice. Happy. Then, out of no where, this Theia planet comes by and wham, Theia and Earth a blown apart. The energy makes them mostly molten. Stuff goes everywhere. What a hot mess.
What is that stuff made of, and what happens to all that Ti?
Maybe 2/3 of the stuff is Earth stuff, and maybe 1/3 is Theia stuff. Was there any Ti on Theia? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Was it the same Ti as on Earth? Again, please refer your question to God. I don't know and it doesn't matter.
There's all this hot stuff floating around. Which piece came from Theia and which from Earth? Can't tell anymore. A bunch of the stuff hangs around and forms Earth 2. Another hunk sits some 100K miles away and eventually forms Moon 1. Essentially, it's all the same homogenous mix of stuff. Can't tell which atoms came from Earth and which from Theia.
The ratio of Ti isotopes in the stuff that made Earth 2 and Moon 1 are the same...the stuff floating around in a molten state was homogeneous. That's what the study found. The same ratio of Ti isotopes. And apparently of O isotopes. Good stuff. Homogenous molten ooze cools and sticks together and forms a homogenous pair of rock balls (Earth 2 and Moon 1).
So tell me why, please, does this mean that that molten stuff thrown about and the matching ratios of isotopes on Earth 2 and Moon 1 precludes the Big Impact?
Thanks