The moon had formed within a few hours, according to a new NASA simulation

A new simulation of the moon’s birth assumes that it could not have been created in a few months or years but in a few hours.

Until recently, the theory behind the birth of the Moon was as follows: billions of years ago, a Mars-sized space object (called Theia) crashed into the forming Earth and sent bits into space and eventually merged to become our natural satellite. . Mais cette théorie contenait deux problèmes : pourquoi la Lune at-elle une signature isotopique (un indice chimique indiquant comment et où un objet s’est formé) si proche de la Terre et comment at-elle atteint cette orbite si proche

This theory has been challenged by recent research by Jacob Kegres, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. In fact, new simulations suggest that the moon could have formed immediately after the impact, within a few hours.

The researchers used additional computing power that helped create simulations that were much closer to reality and demonstrated that low-resolution simulations can miss important aspects of these types of collisions. explain in Statement from NASA : “This opens up a whole new set of possible starting points for the Moon’s evolution. We embarked on this project without knowing exactly what the results of this high-resolution simulation would be. So, in addition to revealing that standard resolutions can give you misleading answers, it was very exciting that the new findings could include a satellite orbiting the Moon.“