Billions of years ago, a version of our Earth that looks very different than the one we live on today was hit by an object about the size of Mars, called Theia – and out of that collision the Moon was formed. How exactly that formation occurred is a scientific puzzle researchers have studied for d Contact online >>
Billions of years ago, a version of our Earth that looks very different than the one we live on today was hit by an object about the size of Mars, called Theia – and out of that collision the Moon was formed. How exactly that formation occurred is a scientific puzzle researchers have studied for decades, without a conclusive answer.
Most theories claim the Moon formed out of the debris of this collision, coalescing in orbit over months or years. A new simulation puts forth a different theory – the Moon may have formed immediately, in a matter of hours, when material from the Earth and Theia was launched directly into orbit after the impact.
"This opens up a whole new range of possible starting places for the Moon''s evolution," said Jacob Kegerreis, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA''s Ames Research Center in California''s Silicon Valley, and lead author of the paper on these results published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We went into this project not knowing exactly what the outcomes of these high-resolution simulations would be. So, on top of the big eye-opener that standard resolutions can give you misleading answers, it was extra exciting that the new results could include a tantalisingly Moon-like satellite in orbit."
The simulations used in this research are some of the most detailed of their kind, operating at the highest resolution of any simulation run to study the Moon''s origins or other giant impacts. This extra computational power showed that lower-resolution simulations can miss out on important aspects of these kinds of collisions, allowing researchers to see new behaviors emerge in a way previous studies just couldn''t see.
A Puzzle of Planetary History
Understanding the Moon''s origins requires using what we know about the Moon – our knowledge of its mass, orbit, and the precise analysis of lunar rock samples – and coming up with scenarios that could lead to what we see today.
Previously prevailing theories could explain some aspects of the Moon''s properties quite well, such as its mass and orbit, but with some major caveats. One outstanding mystery has been why the composition of the Moon is so similar to Earth''s. Scientists can study the composition of a material based on its isotopic signature, a chemical clue to how and where an object was created. The lunar samples scientists have been able to study in labs show very similar isotopic signatures to rocks from Earth, unlike rocks from Mars or elsewhere in the solar system. This makes it likely that much of the material that makes up the Moon originally came from Earth.
In previous scenarios where Theia sprayed out into orbit and mixed with only a little material from Earth, it''s less likely we''d see such strong similarities – unless Theia was also isotopically similar to Earth, an unlikely coincidence. In this theory, more Earth material is used to create the Moon, particularly its outer layers, which could help to explain this similarity in composition.
There have been other theories proposed to explain these similarities in composition, such as the synestia model – where the Moon is formed inside a swirl of vaporized rock from the collision – but these arguably struggle to explain the Moon''s current orbit.
This faster, single-stage formation theory offers a cleaner and more elegant explanation for both these outstanding issues. It could also give new ways to find answers forother unsolved mysteries. Thisscenario can put the Moon into a wide orbit with an interior that isn''t fully molten, potentially explaining properties like the Moon''s tilted orbit and thin crust – making it one of the most enticing explanations for the Moon''s origins yet.
Getting closer to confirming which of these theories is correct will require analysis of future lunar samples brought back to Earth for study from NASA''s future Artemis missions. As scientists gain access to samples from other parts of the Moon and from deeper beneath the Moon''s surface, they will be able to compare how real-world data matches up to these simulated scenarios, and what they indicate about how the Moon has evolved over its billions of years of history.
Beyond simply learning more about the Moon, these studies can bring us closer to understanding how our own Earth became the life-harboring world it is today.
"The more we learn about how the Moon came to be, the more we discover about the evolution of our own Earth," said Vincent Eke, a researcher at Durham University and a co-author on the paper. "Their histories are intertwined – and could be echoed in the stories of other planets changed by similar or very different collisions."
The cosmos is filled with collisions – impacts are an essential part of how planetary bodies form and evolve. On Earth, we know that the impact with Theia and other changes throughout its history are part of how it was able to gather the materials necessary for life. The better scientists can simulate and analyze what''s at play in these collisions, the more prepared we are to understand how a planet could evolve to be habitable like our own Earth.
This research is a collaborative effort between Ames and Durham University, supported by the Institute for Computational Cosmology''s Planetary Giant Impact Research group.The simulations used were run using the open-source SWIFT, (SPH with Inter-Dependent Fine-grained Tasking) code, carried out on the DiRAC (Distributed Research Utilizing Advanced Computing) Memory Intensive service ("COSMA"), hosted by Durham University on behalf of the DiRAC High-Performance Computing facility.
Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to theNASA Ames newsroom.
It''s believed that the Moon formed billions of years ago, from debris from a cosmic collision with Earth. New high-resolution simulations not only illustrate the idea in stunning detail, but reveal that the Moon''s birth might have taken mere hours.
The leading hypothesis for the Moon''s origins says it appeared around 4.5 billion years ago, very soon after Earth itself formed. The inciting incident is said to have been a collision between our early homeworld and a hypothetical, Mars-sized protoplanet named Theia. This mammoth impact would have sent huge amounts of material from both worlds into orbit, where some of it congealed to form what we now know as the Moon.
This story explains some features of the Moon, including its mass and orbit, but leave some major plot holes that are hard to fill. For one, previous simulations of the impact and aftermath indicate that the Moon should be mostly composed of material from Theia, but isotopic studies of lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo missions show that it''s very similar to Earth material.
For the new study, scientists at NASA and the University of Durham used a supercomputer to run hundreds of high-resolution simulations of the impact, changing variables like impact angle, speeds, masses, planetary spins, and other factors. The end results are some enthralling animations of the impact that show new dynamics that other simulations had missed.
The video looks like a cosmic lava lamp, as two orange blobs approach and collide, spraying long strings of material out into orbit around the proto-Earth. Soon this ejected material forms two other blobs, a larger one closer to Earth and a smaller one farther out. The closer blob slowly falls back to Earth, but not before its gravity shunts the smaller blob outwards into a stable, wide orbit. And there you have it – a Moon is born.
The most intriguing implication of this simulation is that the whole process takes only a few hours. One day the Earth didn''t have a Moon, and the next it did. It was previously thought that debris from the crash would have taken months or years to accumulate into the Moon we know today.
The team says that this scenario shows that most of the material that formed the Moon originated from the Earth''s mantle, which explains the similar isotope composition. It also neatly explains a few other mysteries, including why the Moon''s orbit is tilted away from the Earth''s equator, and why it seems to have a relatively thin crust.
Of course, more study will be needed to find the model that fits best, and some of the strongest evidence would likely come from analyzing more Moon rocks taken from different parts of the surface, and deeper down in the crust. With humans poised to return as imminently as 2024, we might soon have more answers.
The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Sources: NASA, University of Durham
NASA originally published this article on October 4, 2022. Edits by EarthSky.
Scientists have believed for some years that, billions of years ago, an object about the size of Mars – which they’d dubbed Theia – smashed into the early Earth … and formed the moon. But how exactly that formation occurred is a puzzle. Researchers have studied it for decades, without a conclusive answer. Most theories claim the moon coalesced from the debris of this collision, in orbit, over months or years. But maybe the moon formed much faster? On October 4, 2022, NASA announced a new simulation suggesting the moon may have formed immediately, in only hours, when material from the Earth and Theia collision launched directly into orbit following the impact.
Jacob Kegerreis is the lead author at NASA''s Ames Research Center. His team published their study in the peer-reviewed journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters on October 4, 2022. Kegerreis said:
This opens up a whole new range of possible starting places for the moon''s evolution. We went into this project not knowing exactly what the outcomes of these high-resolution simulations would be. So, on top of the big eye-opener that standard resolutions can give you misleading answers, it was extra exciting that the new results could include a tantalizingly moon-like satellite in orbit.
The simulations used in this research are some of the most detailed of their kind. They operate at the highest resolution of any simulation run to study the moon''s origins or other giant impacts. This extra computational power showed that lower-resolution simulations can miss out on important aspects of these kinds of collisions. The new simulations allowed researchers to see new behaviors emerge in a way previous studies just couldn''t see.
Understanding the moon''s origins requires using what we know about the moon. Our knowledge of its mass, orbit, and the precise analysis of lunar rock samples are key to creating scenarios for what we see today.
Previously prevailing theories could explain some aspects of the moon''s properties quite well, such as its mass and orbit, but with some major caveats. One outstanding mystery has been why the composition of the moon is so similar to Earth’s. Scientists can study the composition of a material based on its isotopic signature. An isotopic signature is a chemical clue to how and where an object formed. The lunar samples scientists have been able to study in labs show very similar isotopic signatures to rocks from Earth, unlike rocks from Mars or elsewhere in the solar system. This makes it likely that much of the moon’s material originally came from Earth.
In previous scenarios, Theia sprayed out into orbit and mixed with only a little material from Earth. These scenarios showed it’s less likely we''d see such strong isotopic similarities. That is, unless Theia was also isotopically similar to Earth, which would be an unlikely coincidence. The new theory uses more Earth material to create the moon, particularly its outer layers, which could help explain the similarity in composition.
There have been other theories proposed to explain these similarities in composition. One is the synestia model. In this model, the moon formed inside a swirl of vaporized rock from the collision. But theories such as these struggle to explain the moon''s current orbit.
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