A couple of years ago, NASA and Durham university1 put out this breath-taking simulation of the formation of the moon:
That’s a Mars-sized planet colliding with our planet billions of years ago, throwing up debris that would eventually coalesce into the moon. And all of this is thought to have happened in just a few hours. Can you imagine?
For the curious reader, this is the Giant-impact hypothesis. A theory with a whole lot to back it up: Geologists have found evidence of the heart of another planet embedded inside ours. And the moon is suspiciously similar to Earth in core, mantle, and crust makeup.
In fact, the moon’s done more for us than we realize:
- It stabilizes Earth’s rotation, preventing wild climate swings
- It causes tides, which were crucial for our eventual evolution
And it rotates at the same speed as it orbits, which is why we only ever see one side of it. Cool, right?
- 1.
I couldn't find a source for this but I'm pretty sure it was generated by the COSMA8 supercomputer, which has over 528TB of RAM and 67,584 CPU cores!