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The moon thousands of miles away from us

How was it born?

Today we're going to talk about the Origin of the Moon.

To explain the origin of the moon, let's start with the story of a meteorologist. He is the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener.

One day in 1910, Alfred Wigner was admitted to the hospital because of a serious illness. There was no TV, computer or Internet in those days, and the poor and bored Wigner had to look at a map of the world on the wall of his ward to pass the time.

After carefully studying the map of the world, Wigner discovered a very strange thing: the coastline of western Africa coincided well with the coastline of eastern South America; in other words, Africa and South America are like a continent torn apart in the middle. Then he noticed that more continents could be put together like a jigsaw puzzle.

After being discharged from the hospital, Wegener learned another strange thing: a fossil of an ancient reptile, the so-called Chinese dragon, was found in Africa and South America. According to scientists, Zhonglong can only live in fresh water, not in sea water. So why can it cross thousands of kilometers of the Atlantic Ocean?

In order to explain these strange phenomena, in 1912, Wigner put forward an earth-shaking theory, which is the famous theory of continental drift. According to the theory of continental drift, all the continents on the earth were originally a complete continent, called Pangaea; later, the Pangaea split into several pieces, and then drifted to its present position under the influence of the rotation of the earth. As a result, the coincident coastlines of Africa and South America, and the discovery of fossilized dragons in both places, are readily solved.

This is a very rare situation in the history of science. A meteorologist came up with a geological theory to explain a paleontological problem. In a sense, it's a bit like a person without a doctor's license to practice medicine illegally. So for as long as 40 years, Wigner has been regarded as a civil science, which has been mocked by the geological and paleontological circles.

For example, Charlie Schuckett, a professor of paleontology at Yale University, declared: "A layman who transplants his facts from one discipline to another will obviously not get the right results." Terme, director of the French Geological Survey, also asserted: "Wigner's theory is just a beautiful dream, and when people embrace it, all they get is a pile of bubbles and a wisp of smoke."

Of course, amid 40 years of attacks and ridicule, there was support for Wigner's theory, including a professor of geology at Harvard University.

Daley is a master in the field of geology. He became the first dean of the Department of Geography at Harvard University in 1912 and was elected president of the American Geological Society in 1932. Although Daley once called Wigner a "layman" in public, he still found the continental drift theory put forward by the "layman" very reasonable.

Reginald Daley is not only that, but Daley is also trying to solve one of the most criticized questions of continental drift: why did Pangaea suddenly break up into several pieces? To this end, in the 1940s, Daley came up with an even more shocking theory: Pangaea was crushed by a giant asteroid.

Daley believes that a long time ago, a huge asteroid hit the earth, breaking the Pangaea into several pieces. In addition, this violent collision also crashed a large amount of material from the earth's surface (that is, the earth's crust) into space; these materials later came back together to form the moon we see today. This is the "impact theory" of the origin of the moon.

Similar to the experience of the continental drift theory, Daley's "impact theory" has also been reviled in the astronomical community.

Before Daley put forward the "impact theory", astronomers had two main views on the origin of the moon. One school of view holds that the moon and the earth are originally the same nebula, which collapses due to gravity, then splits and forms the moon and the earth respectively, which is the "homology theory" of the origin of the moon. Another view is that the moon was originally a passing celestial body, captured by the earth's gravity, and then turned into a satellite and revolved around the earth, which is the "capture theory" of the origin of the moon. For a long time, the two factions quarreled endlessly. However, they also reached a consensus: they all strongly despised Daley's "impact theory".

Of course, which theory of the origin of the moon is correct or needs to be tested by experiments and observations. In fact, these three theories can give three very different predictions.

The "homology theory" holds that the moon and the earth are formed by the collapse of the same nebula, so the matter on the moon should be exactly the same as that on the earth.

The "capture theory" holds that the moon is a foreign celestial body captured by the earth's gravity, so the matter on the moon should be completely different from that on the earth.

The "impact theory" holds that the moon is reassembled from the earth's crust hit by an asteroid, so the material on the moon should be exactly the same as that of the earth's crust. In other words, if you can bring back the matter on the moon and compare it with the matter on Earth, you can judge which theory of the origin of the moon is correct.

Tu Yuan pexls from July 1969 to December 1972, the Apollo program sent 12 astronauts to the moon. The astronauts brought back a large number of lunar rock samples from the moon. By analyzing these lunar rock samples, the scientists found that the chemical composition of these rock samples is exactly the same as that of the earth's crust. As a result, after being laughed at for 30 years, Daley's "impact theory" finally had the last laugh.

Next, from a modern point of view, I would like to describe in detail the whole process of the formation of the moon. About 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized celestial body called Theia (a Titan in Greek mythology and the mother of the Moon Goddess) crashed into the original Earth called Gaia (the Earth Goddess in Greek mythology and mother of the gods). This violent impact brought "Theia" and "Gaia" together to form the earth today. At the same time, the impact also crashed a large amount of material from the surface of Gaia into space, forming a ring that revolved around the earth; over time, the material in the ring reunited to form today's moon.

Let me make a summary. In 1912, Wigner put forward the famous theory of continental drift. According to the theory of continental drift, all the continents on the earth were originally a complete Pangaea, then the Pangaea split into several pieces, and then drifted to their present position.

To explain why the Pangaea split, Daley suggested that the earth had been hit by a giant celestial body. The collision crashed a large amount of material from the earth's crust into space; these materials later came back together to form the present-day moon. This is the "impact theory" of the origin of the moon. Later, by analyzing the lunar rock samples brought back by the Apollo mission, scientists proved that the theoretical predictions of the "impact theory" were consistent with the actual observations. This also makes the "impact theory", which has been ridiculed by academia for 30 years, the last laugh.

Source: cosmic Odyssey: walking the Solar system author: Wang Shuang part of the picture originated from the Internet copyright belongs to the original author this article comes from Wechat official account: Origin Reading (ID:tupydread), author: Wang Shuang, Editor: Zhang Runxin

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