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The Big Splat, or How Our Moon Came to Be: A Violent Natural History

The second-moon theory.

Add to Basket Add to Wishlist. Description of this Book This science history relates one of the great breakthroughs in local astronomy - the evolution of a successful theory of the moon's genesis that is little known outside of the scientific community. A The Mail on Sunday, 30 March A New Scientist, 7 June A most useful and interesting book. For everyone with even the slightest interest in astronomyA A M2 Best Books, 14 July Besides telling an interesting tale well and elucidating how science progresses, Mackenzie's book emphasizes the fact that impacts have been the primary creative and destructive process throughout the history of the Solar System.

Every Moon--buff will want a copy. Jutzi previously worked on a model that attributed the lunar far-side highlands to tidal forces alone. Francis Nimmo University of California, Santa Cruz , who co-authored that paper, says that the origin of the far side was as much a mystery as the formation of the Moon itself.

Also, Asphaug thinks that samples from the far side of the Moon would help, because the added Trojan material should be slightly older than the rest of the lunar crust.


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He also urges readers to help study the lunar farside in closeup using Google Moon. Could this lead to another citizen-science project on the Internet?

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That there were once two Moons, and that we see the second Moon on the far side today, is a rather powerful concept to think about! The image included here is frequently cited as an example showing the "heavily cratered lunar far side". Most of the Apollo missions took a similar photo about half an hour after the TEI burn which occurred over the far side and provided the kick to get them out of lunar orbit.

This photo was taken from a rather low altitude, around miles above the lunar surface, with a wide-angle lens. The Moon at the time of the exposure loomed some 76 degrees wide in the "sky" for the astronauts departing lunar orbit see http: The photo shows great local detail and gives the impression of extreme topographic relief, many craters with sharp peaks and walls, and this appearance has been repeatedly described as representative of the lunar far side in NASA photo captions. This is, in effect, a "fisheye lens" effect.


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A wide-angle photo is displayed in a narrow angle view on printed page or a computer display and central features appear out-of-proportion. The difference between the hemispheres is real, but this photo does not actually display that.

Big Splat Could Have Reshaped the Moon

In fact, an actual full hemisphere photo of the lunar far side appears as bland as many high-sun photos of the near side lunar highlands. One of the few photos of the far side as a nearly full hemisphere was taken by the Nozomi probe: Could water have been driven into the minerals during or the impact?

The author of another recent study, however, says his findings support the theory. Analysis of a sample from Apollo 16 shows that it formed just 4. Hartmann agrees that the giant impact theory has room for the idea of two moons. In addition, the far side is less rich in certain minerals, like potassium and phosphorus, than the near side, almost as if something pushed them from far to near. If that were the case, however, the lunar crust should show two bulges, Asphaug says.

Giant-impact hypothesis

Instead, Asphaug and Jutzi hypothesized that the bulge formed from the impact of a second, much smaller moon. This model assumes, therefore, that the second moon—and any other bodies—existed for all that time at gravitationally stable points, locked in synchronicity with the larger moon in orbit around Earth. At some point, the smaller moon would no longer be in a stable point, setting up the slow-speed merger.