Giant Impact Theory

The moon is by far the biggest and most easily recognizable object in earth’s atmosphere that can be perceived by the naked eye on a cloudless night. It is hypothesized that it came into existence nearly 4.5 billion years ago, from residual debris after a planetary body collided with earth. Although, considered the runner-up to the sun as the second brightest object in the sky, its illumination is deceitful, insomuch as the moon is not a source of light, but instead reflects the sun’s illumination from the half of the moon that is in direct alignment with the sun at that time. More readily identified as a satellite of the earth rather than as a planet itself or even a star, it has a diameter a quarter of the size of earth’s size and it

Have you ever considered that the moon may not be exactly what it seems to be? Science says that the moon was a result of the Earth colliding with another planet, causing a rocky mass to break free from the earth and be pulled into orbit by the force of gravity. Conspiracy theorists have considered the possibility that the moon may be something more than just a rocky mass orbiting the earth. A theory that has been created regarding our moon is called The Hollow Moon Theory. This theory tries to prove that the moon may just be a cover or a protective layer around an alien's UFO. It may be hard for some to go against scientific research, but there is a possibility that something other than a collision is responsible for the formation of our moon.

The asteroid impact extinction theory began in 1980 with Luis and Walter Alvarez, a father and son team. They theorized that an asteroid struck the Earth at the close of the Cretaceous period, causing devastating effects and mass

Scientists, however, have identified issues with this theory. The main detraction is that an impact of that size and magnitude would have left a circular impression on the planet. Most analysis of

“Even if scientists wanted to make something like a Moon rock by, say, bombarding an Earth rock with high energy atomic nuclei, they couldn 't” (Phillips). In addition, Phillip C. Plait agrees with Tony Phillips and comes to the same conclusions. For example he states there are no stars in the picture because, “The stars are too faint to be seen in the images” (Plait 159). However, unlike Tony Phillips, Plait explains the scientific reasons in depth. He claims astronauts have survived the incredibly high temperature of the Moon due to simple date counting. He explains, “Moon spins on its axis once every 27 days … [which] means … two weeks of sunlight and two weeks of darkness… the surface doesn’t heat up the instant the sunlight touches it…It takes days for the lunar surface to get to its high temperature…” (Plait 166).

and sediments has shown something incredible. It contained clues to how Earth and the Moon formed as well as the history of the Sun. The scientists looked for what life would be like if humans could live on the moon. The Apollo 11 mission brought back the first geologic samples from the Moon back to Earth. Astronauts collected twenty-two kilograms of material which acquired samples of the lunar "soil," fifty rock samples and two core tubes which was found below the moon’s surface. All the samples was not composed with any water which provided no evidence for living organisms in the Moon's history. They figured out that there was volcanic activity since they

There are many different theories about how the moon was formed. People believe different things. I believe one is more reliable than all the others. I think the Big impact theory is the most trustworthy. The Big Impact theory has many different pieces of evidence behind it. The other ones i could barely find any.

Galileo was a coward Galileo was an Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific method. His discoveries with the telescope changed astronomy and paved the way for the acceptance of the copernican Heliocentric system. Galileo, using his own telescope he discovered that the moon has mountains and creators. Galileo found a new position at the university of Padua, teaching geometry, mechanics, and astronomy.

Background Research: A meteoroid is a small chunk of rock that has been broken apart from a much larger chunk of rock called an asteroid, these chunks of rock are located in between Mars and Jupiter, called the asteroid belt. When a meteoroid has been knocked out of the asteroid belt and is on it way towards earth the meteoroid is now a meteor, if the the meteor hits the ground it changes to a meteorite. When the meteorite makes contact with the ground it causes a crater to form, craters are holes on the ground made by the impact of a meteoroid coming towards earth.

In 1975, two scientists by the name of Dr. William K. Hartmann and Dr. Donald R. Davis, came up with a groundbreaking new theory on how the moon was created. Their theory stated “At the time Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, other smaller planetary bodies were also growing. One of these hit earth late in Earth 's growth process, blowing out rocky debris. A fraction of that debris went into orbit around the Earth and aggregated into the moon” (Hartmann & Herres 1). This theory is known as the Giant Impact Theory and is the accepted theory in the scientific community of how the moon was created. Even though this theory is accepted by most, there are still some people who don’t hold this theory to be true. I agree with Davis and Hartmann’s Giant Impact Theory that a great collision occurred and created the moon. The Giant Impact Theory is supported by the lack of iron on the moon, the moon rocks from the Apollo missions, and its acceptance in the scientific community.

The theory of the moon that had made sense was the "Giant impact theory" because of how the moon and the earth had made clearly of why they both had the same materials. The reason why it was the "Giant impact theory"'because when the mars sized object had hit the earth, their was a huge piece that was knocked off of earth and created the moon. As of Dr. William K. Hartmann and Dr. Donald R. Davis, they had made this theory in 1975 in the article of Icarus. If you look at the theory or just imagine mars size object that had took off a huge piece of earth, and the moon has the same material and even though nobody had seen the dark side, they can predict that the dark side has less dense then the perfect shape on the other side. So it can tell that the moon dark side could be all messed up and less dense since the impact of the mars sized object that hit earth.

3. The most supported theory of moon formation today is that a similar sized planetoid (Theia) to our early proto-earth moved closer and closer until finally slamming into earth – being partially absorbed and then throwing off an immense amount of matter. [see image below] This impact was responsible for both the formation of the moon and the tilting of the earth on its axis.

Fig. 2. The formation of the Moon due to an off-centre collision of a Mars sized body (Freedman and Kaufmann, 2009) p.249

The current theory that is adopted is called the "impact theory", and it states that a large celestial body named Theia - probably the size of Mars - collided with our planet tangentially, dislocating a part of Earth with it. It was this grouping of matter that later formed the Moon. However, there are two questions that this theory must answer: why doesn't the Moon hold the same heavy metals as the ones contained on Earth if the former was

1. "Apollo Moon Rocks." Curators Chioce. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. 15 Oct. 2007 http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/cchoice/moonrocks/moonrocks3.htm.