• Corpus ID: 232105014

Origin of the Moon

@inproceedings{Canup2016OriginOT,
  title={Origin of the Moon},
  author={Robin M. Canup and Kevin Righter and Nicolas Dauphas and Kaveh Pahlevan and Matija {\'C}uk and Simon J. Lock and Sarah T. Stewart and Julien J. Salmon and Raluca Rufu and Miki Nakajima and T. Magna},
  year={2016}
}
The Earth-Moon system is unusual in several respects. The Moon is roughly 1/4 the radius of the Earth - a larger satellite-to-planet size ratio than all known satellites other than Pluto's Charon. The Moon has a tiny core, perhaps with only ~1% of its mass, in contrast to Earth whose core contains nearly 30% of its mass. The Earth-Moon system has a high total angular momentum, implying a rapidly spinning Earth when the Moon formed. In addition, the early Moon was hot and at least partially… 
View PDF on arXiv

Figures from this paper

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 309 REFERENCES
Earth-Moon System, Planetary Science, and Lessons Learned
The origin and evolution of the Moon is now well understood. Many bizarre theories were proposed to account for our satellite before these were swept away by the data from the Apollo missions. We now…
RESONANCES IN THE EARLY EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH-MOON SYSTEM
Most scenarios for the formation of the Moon place the Moon near Earth in low-eccentricity orbit in the equatorial plane of Earth. We examine the dynamical evolution of the Earth-Moon system from…
Origin of the Moon in a giant impact near the end of the Earth's formation
TLDR
This work reports a class of impacts that yield an iron-poor Moon, as well as the current masses and angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system, and suggests that the Moon formed near the very end of Earth's accumulation.
Evolution of the earth-moon system.
Scientists can determine the distance Earth-Moon with great precision. They achieve this by bouncing a laser beam on special mirrors deposited on the Moon´s surface by astronauts in 1969, and…
Early evolution of the Earth–Moon system with a fast-spinning Earth
The Origin of the Natural Satellites
Impact origin of the Moon
A few years after the Apollo flights to the Moon, it became clear that all of the existing theories on the origin of the Moon would not satisfy the growing body of constraints which appeared with the…
WHERE DID THE MOON COME FROM
The current standard theory of the origin of the Moon is that Earth was hit by a giant impactor the size of Mars, causing ejection of iron-poor impactor mantle debris that coalesced to form the Moon.…
Coupled orbital-thermal evolution of the early Earth-Moon system with a fast-spinning Earth
New approaches to the Moon's isotopic crisis
  • H. Melosh
  • Geology, Physics
    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
  • 2014
TLDR
The isotopic constraint may be the most stringent test yet for theories of the Moon's origin, as it differs from the Earth's in its low volatile content and perhaps in the elevated abundance of oxidized iron.
...
...