What the Earth may have looked like when the Moon was made. The Solar System was young.
Technology has made quite the impressive leap in the past decades. After taking a closer look at rocks gathered from Earth’s Moon by the Apollo crew, scientists were recently able to gather new information on our astral satellite.
Initially, it was believed that the Moon was formed after the slight impact between Earth and another astral body. Judging from the overall size of the Moon and its distance from our planet, scientists were able to mathematically deduce that the size of the other astral body was approximately the size of Mars.
The object in question has long left our solar system and the only traces it may have left are hidden within the surface of the Moon.
However, the theory seems to not have been entirely accurate. After a closer look at rocks brought from the Moon by the Apollo mission with newer technology, the new theory is that the impact between Earth and the other astral body was in fact quite violent.
The vivid analogy used by scientists was that of a sledgehammer hitting a watermelon. In addition to that mental image, scientists have decided to label the impact as a, in lack of better words, extremely giant impact.
If Earth had life on it before the impact, it would have all been wiped out.
How The Moon Came To Be
As the foreign Mars-sized astral body smashed into the Earth, the resulting explosion was so big that whole chunks of both bodies broke loose. At an atomic level, mineral isotopes from both Earth and the other astral body merged into something new altogether.
In the wake of the “extremely giant” space hit and run, debris was scattered over a surface more than 500 times the size of the Earth. Needless to say, some of that debris may have definitely made it to Mars or Venus, or may still be floating around in the belt between Mars and Jupiter.
However, most of the debris collected itself over time and began forming what we now know as the Moon.
Modern technology shows that our largest satellite did not have an easy time coming into existence as it is today. The Moon can be considered a scar of an ancient primordial time when the Solar System was a much more volatile and erratic place.
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