Scientists shed new light on formation of moon
14 April 2015 - 02:13
Scientists might finally have figured out how the moon was formed. The "giant impact" hypothesis, proposed in the 1970s, holds that the moon formed from the debris of a Mars-sized planet that smacked into Earth 4.5billion years ago.The problem with that is that Earth rocks and moon rocks are so similar that researchers thought there was only a 1% chance of another planet being involved.But, researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, report in Nature magazine that the moon was formed when the Earth collided with a large body called Theia, which had a chemical make-up similar to that of Earth, and this explains the similarities between the moon and Earth. ..
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