Was The Moon Part Of The Earth?

Abstract:

Was the Moon part of the Earth? We have learned from tests from samples of the moon brought back by the Apollo astronauts is that the Moon is about 4.6 billion years old. It formed at about the same time as the rest of the solar system did. There are several possibilities for its creation such as the Fission theory, the Capture theory, Co-accretion theory, the Giant Impact theory and others. After all of my research I have concluded that the most probable of the possibilities is and has been the Giant Impact theory. Based on this theory the moon was part of the Earth.

Introduction:

Most of the theories that have been presented have been invalidated so far except the Giant Impact theory. The Fission theory stated that the Moon was part of the Earth that may have been cast off during rapid spinning, but neither the Earth nor the Moon has fossil evidence of such an occurrence. It would have to have detached from around the Pacific Basin and that only formed around seventy million years ago, and we have proven that the Moon is much older than that. The Capture theory tried to prove that Earth somehow captured a random planet in its gravitational field. This theory has been shown to be false because the Moon is far too large of a planet for Earth to have captured. Both the Earth and the Moon have been proven to have formed at the same time and about the same distance from the Sun. We also know from the samples that the amount of oxygen isotopes on both are identical, but the Moon lacks an iron core and is much less dense than Earth which contrasts with the formation of the terrestrial planets. The Giant Impact theory is that as Earth was still forming it was struck by another planet. This event would have taken place during the period of our solar system's history called the heavy bombardment. The heavy bombardment period occurred during the first few hundred million years of the solar system and has left scars on planets that we can still see today. It was leftover planetesimals that were colliding, impacting and battering everything. Such a collision with Earth would have produced a large vapor cloud that would have left a substantial amount of material in the orbit around it. The material would have re-accreted to form the Moon. Basically the collision would have to have occurred with a body having at least the mass of Mars to give the Earth the present angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system. The samples that were brought back by the Apollo mission provided further evidence to support the theory. The samples show that the Moon's overall composition is very similar to Earth's mantle which also proves that it was once part of the Earth.

Research:

In the 1970's William Hartmann and D.R. Davis of the Planetary Sciences Institute in Tucson AZ indicated that if the Earth were to collide with another planetesimal that the collision would produce large vapor clouds that they believed would form into the Moon. At the same time, A.G.W. Cameron and William Ward of Harvard University

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