The moon was born within hours after the giant impact: new study
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New Delhi: It is hard not to look at the serene beauty of the moon on a starry night.
Enamoured of its charms, Poets often say it swims in the milky white that spreads on the azure world.
Sitting about 3, 84,400 kilometers from Earth, the moon never ceases to attract us earthlings.
But scientists are more interested in the mystery of its formation.
The most valid of their findings is the moon came into being following giant impact between Earth and a Mars-sized body known as Theia.
Now researchers say the moon was placed into the orbit immediately after the aforesaid impact.
The highest-resolution simulations of the erstwhile impact, created by researchers at the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, suggest that the moon appeared within hours after materials from the Earth and Theia got into the orbit some 4.5 billion years ago.
The findings of the study appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters state that giant impacts are capable of placing a satellite with similar mass and iron content into the orbit outside Earth's Roche limit.
Some existing theories about the moon could explain its certain aspects. However, it largely escapes understanding how the moon came to have properties similar to Earth's.
As the new study offers rare insights into the moon's Evolution, it can explain unsolved mysteries including its titled orbit away from Earth's equator.
