Computer Science
Scientific paper
Feb 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008psrd.repte.123t&link_type=abstract
Planetary Science Research Discoveries
Computer Science
Moon, Lunar, Moon Origin, Origin Of The Moon, Moon-Forming Impact, Oxygen Isotopes, Accretion, Planet Formation, Earth
Scientific paper
A striking feature in the compositions of the Earth and Moon is their identical abundances of oxygen isotopes. Most planetary scientists agree that the Moon formed as the result of a giant impact with the proto-Earth. It explains some important characteristics about the Earth and Moon, such as why the Moon has a small metallic iron core, but planetary formation models suggest that the Moon ought to have a different oxygen isotopic composition than the Earth. Why is it the same? Kaveh Pahlevan and David Stevenson (Caltech) suggest that after the giant impact and before the Moon formed, Earth exchanged materials with the disk of magma and gas surrounding it, ironing out differences in their isotopic compositions. The process would take a couple of hundred years, about the time (100 to 1000 years) the disk would last before coalescing into the Moon. This interesting idea is far from proven, but it will undoubtedly lead to additional work because it has such great implication s for the compositions of the Earth and Moon, when Earth received its water, and how planets accreted from the cloud of gas and dust surrounding the primitive Sun.
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