A New Study Challenges the Hypothesis of the Moon’s Origin from Earth and Theia Debris.
Astronomers Darren Williams and Michael Zugger from Pennsylvania State University have identified new evidence that may explain the origins of the Moon, Earth’s only natural satellite.
The Moon may be an object that Earth accidentally captured during the Hadean Eon – (AI Illustration: ANH THƯ).
According to the most widely accepted hypothesis, based on evidence of material homogeneity between Earth and the Moon and collision models in the early solar system, the Moon is the “offspring” of Earth and Theia.
Theia is the name of a hypothetical planet the size of Mars, believed to have collided with the primordial Earth around 4.5 billion years ago, during the early Hadean Eon.
This collision mixed materials from both celestial bodies, forming the Earth we know today. Some debris was ejected into Earth’s orbit, eventually coalescing to form the Moon.
Despite substantial supporting evidence, this remains just a hypothesis.
According to recent research published in the journal The Planetary Science Journal, another possibility has emerged: The celestial body known as the Moon may be a “stolen object”, similar to Neptune’s moon Triton.
Triton orbits Neptune in the opposite direction to other satellites and at a different angle.
As a result, scientists conclude that it is an object from the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system that accidentally crossed paths and was captured by Neptune’s gravitational pull.
Regarding Earth’s Moon, there is also an unexplained anomaly: Its orbit around Earth is not aligned with the equator as one would expect from an object that coalesced from a debris cloud.
There are only two possible scenarios:
- First, some impact caused this moon’s orbit to deviate.
- The second, more plausible hypothesis is that it did not coalesce from any debris cloud.
According to the researchers’ calculations, although much smaller than Neptune, our planet is still capable of capturing an object the size of Mercury or even Mars.
This suggests that it may have been stolen from another entity or simply be a massive object that formed directly from the protoplanetary disk of the solar system, captured into Earth’s orbit billions of years ago.
