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| October 9, 2022
The star may have formed within hours of the Earth’s collision with a celestial body. (Photo: clone)
A new supercomputer simulation from NASA, in partnership with Durham University in England, sheds light on the possible origin and evolution of the Moon. According to the video, released this week, the star formed a few hours after the collision of Earth and a celestial body the size of Mars, releasing the material that makes up the Moon. It is one of the most detailed and best accurate simulations ever made for studies of the origin of the Moon.
The simulation begins with a collision between an object called Theia and the Earth. Debris from the collision forms two smaller bodies of different sizes, then the gravity of the larger body pushes the smaller body – the moon – forward, launching it into a wide, stable orbit around the Earth. This could have happened billions of years ago, in the period when the solar system was still forming. The video is available on NASA’s YouTube channel.
Although the theory about a collision between the Earth and another body that gave rise to the moon is not new, most previous assumptions said that the star would have formed over a period of months or years. In this new simulation, this process may have occurred within hours.
“This opens up a whole new set of potential starting points for Moon evolution,” said Jacob Kejris, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center and lead author of the paper on these findings, which are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Moreover, the new simulations showed that the Moon may not be the only body formed as a result of the collision between Earth and Theia, which is unprecedented. “We got into this project without knowing exactly what the results of these high-resolution simulations would be. So, in addition to being surprised when we found out that the standard accuracy might be wrong, it was even more exciting to see that the new results indicated the inclusion of a satellite that might look like the Moon. in orbit,” Kegerreis said.
The new results were only possible with technological advances for supercomputers doing this kind of simulation. According to a note from NASA, this extra computational power showed that low-resolution simulations can miss important aspects of these types of collisions. Now, researchers will be able to find new behaviors and get closer to understanding the true origin of events.
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