Author: Helen Thompson / Source: Science News
The moon might have formed from the filling during Earth’s jelly doughnut phase.
Around 4.5 billion years ago, something hit Earth, and the moon appeared shortly after.
A new simulation of how the moon formed suggests it took shape in the midst of a hot cloud of rotating rock and vapor, which (in theory) forms when big planetary objects smash into each other at high speeds and energies. Planetary scientists Simon Lock of Harvard University and Sarah Stewart of the University of California, Davis proposed this doughnut-shaped planetary blob in 2017 and dubbed it a synestia (SN: 8/5/17, p. 5).Radiation at the surface of this swirling cloud of vaporized, mixed-together planet matter sent rocky rain inward toward bigger debris. The gooey seed…
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