The new theory suggests that our satellite, the Moon, was formed not as a result of a single giant collision ( Theia ) but by a series of large concatenated impacts. This would explain why the Moon appears to be composed of material very similar to that of the Earth and not by a combination of terrestrial remnants and remnants from another planet.
Those responsible for this theory are a team of scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Sciences at the University of Rejovot (Israel), which carried out around 1,000 numerical simulations of large planetary bodies – not gigantic – impacting the Earth in their formation stage . In these simulations, the impacts produced disks of debris or debris, which would likely be made up of ground material. This debris would have ended up accumulating to create a small moon that would have migrated to merge with a growing Moon , according to experts.
Thus, the origin of the Moon should not be sought in a single geological instant, but in around 20 impacts that would have occurred over many millions of years , and that formed what is currently our natural satellite.
However, the same scientists point out that more evidence should be sought to confirm that this hypothesis is really the correct one. Hopefully, China’s Moon-bound Chang’e 5 space program could offer the solution to this age-old dilemma. The space mission will collect the first moon rock sample since the famous Apollo missions.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
