Posted on 05/01/2019 11:20:29 PM PDT by LibWhacker
It seems passing strange that so many planets in the solar system have moons, but ours had to come from a planetary collision. Was the early system bumper cars writ large?
I’ve always heard the outer crust solidified about 4 billion years ago. But it had to have been a little more than that since geologists have radio-dated rocks to over 4 billion years.
When I was a kid, and even into my early adulthood, science never really got behind the idea that most craters were impact features and not volcanic in nature. Us ordinary mortals all laughed at what seemed to be “The Sky Is Falling” hysteria. What a bunch of Chicken Littles!
Then Eugene Shoemaker came along and finally clinched it for the impact crowd, first for many craters on Earth, then again for the Moon’s craters when he worked on the Apollo program. That was 1969. So impact theory is very, very recent. It just wasn’t accepted before Shoemaker.
I can’t for the life of me recall a theory from back then that claimed a huge magma ocean which covered the Earth splashed out into outer space after a giant impact, ultimately coalescing and cooling to become our Moon. Impact theory just wasn’t accepted before ‘69. And after that I was too interested to have missed it. Or so it seems. More details please, so I can check it out. Very interesting, thanks.
Who says you have to be a scientist to make a great discovery? Go for it!
I don’t remember impact being involved. Earth and the moon are both too circular for I oscar to be involved.
What I remember is an illustration of the lava ball breaking from the earth and becoming the moon.
Both earth and moon were molten at the time.
“Was the early system bumper cars writ large?”
Sure was, if you believe Immanuel Velikovsky. Not even all that early.
I remember him.
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