Description
Theory of the formation of the Moon by gravitational forces gathering mass. Largely accepted to be a result of a massive terrestrial impact during the early formation of the solar system.
Introduction
The Moon has been a constant companion through the evolution of the planet, ever observant. As life on Earth grew older, it began to wonder where had this ancient monolith come from?
There have been multiple hypotheses for the formation of the Moon. Before the 1970s, some thought that the Moon could have been a large wayward planetesimal captured by Earth’s gravity. Or perhaps while Earth was still molten, it was spinning so fast that material separated and formed the Moon. Researchers also hypothesized that the Moon could have formed from the same accretion disk as the Earth. These hypotheses were rejected because of the improbability/impossibility of such orbital systems. For example, the Earth-Moon system currently...
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Glefke, R.H. (2023). Accretion of the Moon. In: Cudnik, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Lunar Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14541-9_149
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14541-9_149
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