Where did the moon come from?
Day 79 /365
When I was a kid I used to sit in my balcony and look up at night’s sky. I alway’s wanted to get a telescope, but I settled for the next best thing, which was a Sony camcorder that had a 40x digital zoom.
With the light pollution that we have these days, I’m not sure if a kid born in the last decade even knows how a starry night looks like. Would these kids look up at the moon and wonder, where the hell did that big white thing come from?
One of the advantages those kids would have is that if they did have that question, they’ll have to just spend a few minutes on their phone to find the answer. This is exactly what I did today.
So where did the moon come from?
The most popular theory we have for the formation of our moon is the Giant-impact hypothesis, which says that when the earth was newly formed, a giant object of the size of Mars collided with it. The debris from the collision formed our moon.
The biggest evidence supporting this is that the rocks on the moon and earth have the same stable isotope ratio. This means that both the rocks must have the same origin, which supports the theory that the moon was once part of the earth.
It’s facts like these that can give you a mild existential crisis. Suddenly the traffic on your way to work doesn’t seem that big of a deal when you think that you are on a rock which is floating in infinite space, and some other giant rock can just come and smash into it and turn it all into magma again.
This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here
Yesterday’s blog — A simple rule to stop procrastinating