Orbital Eccentricity of Mercury and the Origin of the Moon

Details Orbital Eccentricity of Mercury and the Origin of the Moon Orbital Eccentricity of Mercury and the Origin of the Moon

Dec 1972

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1972natur.240..299c&link_type=abstract

Nature, Volume 240, Issue 5379, pp. 299-300 (1972).

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A NUMBER of mechanisms for the formation of the Moon have been suggested; fission of the Earth, precipitation in a hot gaseous silicate atmosphere, independent formation in orbit about the Earth, and independent formation elsewhere in the solar system followed by capture by the Earth1. Although the last of these mechanisms has been admitted to be improbable by its proponents, they have shown that it is by no means impossible dynamically2. The principal objection to this mechanism is the strange composition of the Moon. It has been recognized for many years that the low mean density of the Moon implies that it is highly deficient in metallic iron. The lunar exploration programme has also shown that the Moon is much more deficient than the Earth in the more volatile of the condensable elements. Because of the apparent difficulty of satisfying these composition constraints in a theory in which the Moon is formed elsewhere in the solar system, I have tended to favour the other mechanisms mentioned above3,4.

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