A team of researchers from Japan and the United States attempt to resolve the theory of giant impact hypothesis by adding associate degree ocean of rock to the combo. Also known as Big Splash, the giant impact hypothesis suggests the Moon is formed out of the debris left over from a collision between Earth and an astronomical body the size of Mars in the Hadean eon, approximately 4.5 billion years ago.
Computer simulations indicates most of the material that makes up the moon would have to have come from the planetoid that crashed into Earth. However recent studies of moon rocks tells a different story. More researchers are finding that the Earth and the moon Chemical Compositions are nearly identical. If so, then how can the moon be made of mostly Earth and mostly not-Earth at the same time? Something's gotta give.
The authors of the new study arrange to resolve this contradiction by setting the time of the nice impact at regarding fifty million years, once the formation of the sun (toward the sooner finish of the usually calculable window) once the young Earth could are lined by an ocean of rock up to 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) deep. during a series of laptop simulations, the researchers pitched a rocky protoplanet into this magma-drenched Earth, so watched because the liquid ocean splashed up into house during a big "arm" of rock.
"In our model, about 80% of the moon is made of proto-Earth materials," study co-author Shun-Ichiro Karato, a geophysicist at Yale University, said in a statement. "In most of the previous models, about 80% of the moon is made of the impactor. This is a big difference."
According to the study authors, the magma-ocean hypothesis shows that the moon's Earth-like chemical composition could be compatible with the giant impact theory.
Although it's still not a complete answer to how the moon is formed, it does unify the predominant theory with actual observations with some clarity.
