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New Evidence That the Moon Was Created In a Massive Collision
derekmead writes "New evidence that the giant impact hypothesis is correct: A paper published today in Nature shares findings of a chemical analysis of Moon rocks that shows fractional differences between the makeup of the Earth and Moon that most likely were caused by the collision between Earth and a Mars-sized planet around 4.5 billion years ago. Although the two are quite similar, it's been previously shown that Moon rocks lack volatile elements, which suggests they may have evaporated during the incredibly intense heat and pressure created during an impact event. But if the hypothesis that light elements actually evaporated from Moon rocks during their formation is correct, you'd expect to find evidence of elements being layered by mass — heavier elements would condense first, and so on. That process is known as isotopic fractionation — a concept central to carbon dating — and the Washington University team's results suggest they found exactly that (abstract). They compared the blend of zinc isotopes in Moon rocks and Earth samples, and found that the Moon rocks held slightly higher proportions of heavier zinc isotopes. If the Moon was indeed once part of Earth — which has been shown by extensive modeling (PDF) — the difference in the balance of zinc profiles would most likely be explained by lighter zinc isotopes evaporating away following a collision."
A mars size rock hits the earth, that would create enough heat to melt the rocks and send them into space as a big liquid ball. Those crazy astronauts that play with their drinks show in microgravity that liquid will prefer to be in a sphere shape. So a chunk of liquid rock the size of the moon over Thousands/Millions of years of slowly cooling down would take the shape of a sphere.
Now the moon isn't a perfect sphere, that is because it is spinning while it was cooling and those other gravitational forces shifting it, and once an awhile getting pounded by some other rocks.
Sorry was that a troll?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
With some careful interpretation and text analysis of Velikovsky's
works, we may yet find he predicted this.
I think you mean something more like 6012 years old.
I'm guessing this happened before Flash Gordon's time. Who knew that 40's pulp sci-fi was based on facts?
What did the people who only worked 60 hour weeks in grad school believe?
Easy. First of all, the Moon is made of green cheese. What most people don't know, though, is that this is a highly stinky form of cheese. So the Earth keeps its distance from the smelly Moon. The Moon landings were all faked except for that one documentary about a man and his dog who went to the moon looking for a grand day out.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You insensitive clod! The invisible pink unicorn is a demon implanted into the minds of credulous cretins by the Flying Spaghetti Monster to test our faith! Obviously the FSM, his spaghetiness be praised, was the one who created the moon by spontaneously generating a meatball and applying his large-body creation sauce to it. o one listen to parent - he is a deluded fool.
You can read about the reason for the moon's spherical shape here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_equilibrium#Planetary_geology
It's fairly straightforward, nothing at all like Quantum mechanics.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
...that Pangea (the conglomeration of land which drifted apart to become our current continents) might have been the Earth's "exit wound", where the Moon's material separated. For me, this is a hunch, with no basis in scientific fact, so I'm not going to declare its truth or defend it, but I would not be surprised if, in 10 or 20 years, some evidence were to surface supporting this idea.
I remember being a kid and thinking that South America and Africa would fit together like a puzzle, and this was long before I'd ever heard of Pangea. Since that time, it's my understanding that irrefutable evidence--basically, the matching of fault lines and mineral components--has been found to support this. Later, I remember having the idea that the Moon may have been spit out of the Earth as the result of a large collision. My hunch was specious as it was based only on the idea that its orbit is perfectly matched with its rotation speed (aka tidally locked), and I understand that it's possible for that to happen in other ways, but this seemed to me the best bet.
That last idea led to the Pangea idea. Maybe I'll read the freakin' article to see if other people feel the same way.
The CB App. What's your 20?
I figured a meatball must have fallen off while His Great Noodleiness was creating the earth.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
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.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Considering it took a Mars-sized object to cause the collision event, and that a pretty substantial amount of mass would have been blasted away at escape velocity, I'm not sure the veracity of your math.
Of course, you might be roughly right, but probably not for the reasons I think you're implying...
Romney: well what you have to know is that the Moon is NOT a job creator. The Moon is part of that 47% of the solar system that sponges off of the hard work the other half is doing. The Moon is a worthless satellite.
Some Character Who Is Not Romney: Yes, but isn't the Moon responsible for tides? Without tides, there would be no surfers. Without surfers, there wouldn't be the movie Point Break and that would be tragic. The Moon is also responsible for werewolves. You need a full Moon for werewolves to change And I quote
Even a man who is pure in heart
and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright
and if he doesn't wear his Mormon magic underwear
Were it not for the Moon, then the act of baring our posteriors would simply be called "baring our posteriors" or something equally uncool.
I could site numerous other examples, Mr. Future-President-To-Be-Because-The-Current-President-Was-Coasting-Like-It-Was-The-Month-Of-June-In-His-Senior-Year-So-He-Phoned-In-The-Previous-Debate-And-Dropped-Around-4-Points-In-The-Polls-According-To-Real-Clear-Politics. But I think I have made my point. Check and Mate, sir.
Who DOESNT think the moon was caused by a collision, outside of a few Creationists?
Tut. Look back at the past. I used to be a lot more into astronomy than I am now, and back in the 70s/80s, the thought that the moon was caused by a collision was not laughable, but looked at askance. One thought was that if there was a helluva collision, why wasn't the rest of the planet shattered into fragments (much like the poor chaps in the gap between Mars and Jupiter...). I took the "both formed together, dual planet" thesis as the latest there was 'til I read Bill Bryson (god help me...) in his book "A short history of nearly everything", or some such title.
..
Every theory is blindingly obvious and unquestionable, 'til someone proves it isn't. T. H. Huxley read Darwin's "Origin of Species" and thought it stupid of him (Huxley) not to have thought of it. Same here
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Hello,
My understanding of current geological theory is that Pangea is just the most recent of a cyclic occurrence of supercontinents.
There have been multiple time periods in Earth's history when most of the land was in one supercontinent, which then split into continents, only to rejoin again. Wikipedia has the cycle at 300M to 500M years.
Here's the wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercontinent_cycle
So, I think your exit would theory contradicts current geological theory.
--PeterM
There has been a flurry of new models (or significant variations on the old model) suggested recently. They include a smaller than Mars impactor that hit at a higher velocity and a slower impactor that was approximately the same size as the newly formed Earth. Both were inspired by studies that showed that the evection resonance of the Earth-Moon-Sun system would allow for a greater slow down in the rotation of the Earth getting to the contemporary 24 hr day. (see http://io9.com/5952497/further-evidence-that-the-moons-explosive-birth-was-weirder-than-we-thought et al)
I suppose you're a troll as well, but to hell with it, I'll bite.
Any celestial body large enough to have a sizable gravity (I am sure there's a threshold formula somewhere, but CBA to check) will take, in time, a spherical shape because of... GRAVITY! (applause in the background)
http://www.pa.msu.edu/sciencet/ask_st/031198.html
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
But why are all the planets and moons so round? Why do we not see some that are odd shapes?
Self-gravity. With sufficient mass and radius, gravitational forces overcome the yield strength of the materials and cause even solid bodies to assume a spherical shape. This occurs at about 300km radius. The surface may still be irregular, but overburden pressure causes rocks at depth to undergo plastic or ductile deformation. For a mathematical derivation, Google "potato radius".
The Moon has a radius of over 1,700 km. Bear in mind, also, that much of it and the Earth would have be molten material after being separated by a collision, so both would have returned to a spherical shape rather quickly.
Also, if we're wrong about how the moon was formed, the worst that'll happen is that someone has to rewrite a few astronomy textbooks. If we're wrong about humans making the planet hotter (which I don't believe we are), that means rich people don't need to spend a lot of money reducing the amount of greenhouse gases they dump into the atmosphere. Maybe that's why "giant impact deniers" are rather rarer than climate change deniers...
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
Albert Einstein
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I feel obliged to point out that isotopic fractionation is not "central" to carbon dating. The key to carbon dating is that radioactive carbon-14 decays to nitrogen-14 with a half life of roughly 5700 years, enabling biological material to be dated by its residual carbon-14 content. That is not isotopic fractionation, it's radioactive decay. Isotopic fractionation would be involved if you observed a difference in the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 in plants versus that same ratio in the air.
I'm sure that comment sounded less retarded in your head.