The split personality of the Moon may mean there were once two
In any great moment in a sci-fi movie, the protagonist will land stranded on a foreign planet that may have enough similarities to Earth except for one thing. A slow motion, dramatic pan of the sky will reveal not one, but two or more moons, shocking the hero.
Perhaps instead of being lost in space, our hero was right here on Earth.
Scientists now argue that our moon may have had a smaller sibling that slowly crashed into our singular orbiter leaving it the victor.
It all goes back to when Earth was struck by a Mars-sized planet, resulting in scattered debris that eventually formed our own moon. But it now seems likely that that debris could have formed a smaller version that was “stuck in a gravitational tug of war between the Earth and the Moon,” according to Matt McGrath, science reporter for the BBC World Service.
But why question one versus two moons? According to the research paper from Nature: “The most striking geological feature of the Moon is the terrain and elevation dichotomy between the hemispheres: the nearside is low and flat, dominated by volcanic maria, whereas the farside is mountainous and deeply cratered.”
The divergent sides lead scientists to speculate that a slow-motion collision took place. “It was a rather gentle collision at around 2.4km per second; lower than the speed of sound – that’s important because it means no huge shocks or melting was produced,” said co-author of the paper, Dr Martin Jutzi.
The subsequent impact is believed to have caused the dueling landscapes apparent today.
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