The Moon was born from the impact of a planet the size of Mars with Earth: the new theory of NASA

magazine Astrophysical Journal Letters Published new data on the birth of the moon. It is a collaboration between Durham University in England and NASA’s Ames Research Center in the United States. The two universities paid together Highly detailed simulation To understand how our satellite is created 4.5 billion years ago. The new simulations are among the highest available currently, and the result shows how it only took a few hours to create. And this is the most interesting detail, it will be formed byThe influence of the planet Thea with the Earth.

Made up of 60% of Earth-like elements

“We found that giant impacts can immediately result in a satellite with a mass and iron content equivalent to that of the Moon,” the researchers, coordinated by Jacob Kejris of the Ames Research Center, wrote in the article. A new view, then, on the birth of our satellite. Thanks to the simulation, the components of the moon are also explained: 60% will be items similar to those on our planet, especially in its outer parts. This always stems from the fact that creation resulted from an impact between the Earth and another planet.

We still need more data to get to know it better

This could also be the starting point for solving other mysteries that astronomers around the world have studied for years, such as the mysteries of the tilted orbit and the thin crust. The final confirmation of all these assumptions can only be given by the Moon itself: other help can come, for example, from the analysis of Moon rocks that future missions of the Artemis program They will be brought to earth. The ability to study rocks that come from different points on the Moon and the Earth’s interior will mean that it will be possible to compare their real properties with simulated ones.

“A new starting point for understanding the moon”

“This opens up a whole new set of potential starting points for the evolution of the Moon,” said Jacob Kegres, a researcher at the Ames Research Center. In a note from NASA – We got into this project without knowing exactly what the results of our high-resolution simulations would be. So, the big revelation is that Standard decisions can give you misleading answersThe additional computational power of the simulations showed that the same study, but with low accuracy, could miss important aspects of this type of collision, preventing researchers from seeing new details.