Did the Moon Form from a Nuclear Explosion?

reply to post by Arbitrageur


To first reply;
Ordo Ab Chao
Chaos may look chaotic on the microcosm and in a short time span, but stretch the time and look at the macro, and it always ends up in a fractal.
If earth had the process, there should be proof of it else where .

To second reply;
Agreed this was abit of a far stretch

To third reply;
I agree that what you described is the most plausible theory, however never in recorded human history has the moon been close enough to earth to completely block out the sun, I find it highly suspicious that it just happens to be perfect now (but that could just be human nature )

Gotta go, shift just ended
Namaste

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I thought they had revised the impact theory in which when the impact happened, the majority of the material that made up the moon was material stripped off of the Earth, not the remains of the impactor.

I agree that the best way to answer a lot of these questions is to get back to the moon and do a lot more serious science by being on it's surface.

Originally posted by redoubt
Oh, no doubt... but their origins?

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but if Theia was destroyed in an impact with Earth the only place we might find evidence of it is in the Earth and the moon.

So it's not like you can go and find the original impactor.

But we have over 30,000 things that have impacted Earth, and can compare them to each other as well as the Earth, Moon, Mars, etc. So even if we don't know the exact origin, we still have a sample size of over 30,000 and not a sample size of 1. So I don't understand why you'd say

Originally posted by redoubt
All in all, to say that the moon is identical to Earth while different from the most of rest of the solar system that we haven't even yet begun to explore in earnest, seems to be more a leap of faith than anything else.

We have well over 30,000 pieces of evidence of what the rest of the solar system that might impact Earth is like, that don't require any faith.

Originally posted by eriktheawful
I thought they had revised the impact theory in which when the impact happened, the majority of the material that made up the moon was material stripped off of the Earth, not the remains of the impactor.

If you have a source for that it would be helpful, but Meijer, Anisichkin, and van Westrenen suggest such models haven't been successful as I mentioned in this post. Maybe they're wrong, but that's their claim.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


ah, here we go:

This material quickly coalesced into the Moon (possibly within less than a month, but in no more than a century). Estimates based on computer simulations of such an event suggest that some twenty percent of the original mass of Theia would have ended up as an orbiting ring of debris, and about half of this matter coalesced into the Moon.

Giant Impact Hypothesis

So only 20% of Theia ends up in orbit, and only half of that, 10% ends up forming part of the moon, meaning the other 90% is made up from the Earth.

Of course 10% is still significant and not marginal. Perhaps most of Theia's material ended up under what is the moon's crust today.

Still, to help answer questions like this, we'd need to go there.

Originally posted by eriktheawful
So only 20% of Theia ends up in orbit, and only half of that, 10% ends up forming part of the moon, meaning the other 90% is made up from the Earth.

I don't see that in your source. But I went to your source and looked at the source cited, source #11:

adsabs.harvard.edu...

In all cases, the vast majority of the orbiting material originates from the impactor, consistent with previous findings.

That's from the source your source cites. I think you're misinterpreting what you're reading, and or the author of the article you cited might have but he didn't say what you seem to think he said, about 90% coming from Earth. Source 12 also says something similar on page 300 about most of the material coming from the impactor, so if you or the author are coming to a different conclusion, you're disagreeing with the sources being cited. I think the source of the misunderstanding is your apparent assumption that Theia and the moon are of similar mass, and this extreme case was considered, but simulations have shown it's more likely that Theia would have been significantly more massive than the moon:

a giant impactor mass between 0.11 and 0.14 Earth masses

Now compare that to the mass of the moon:

www.universetoday.com...

The mass of the Moon is only 1.2% the mass of the Earth.

There's your ~90% of Theia right there, in the difference between 0.12 Earth masses and 0.012 Earth masses. The mass of the moon is about 10% of a 0.12 Earth mass impactor, meaning there's no need for much material to come from Earth.

However source 12 also says these models may be incomplete and viewed with some skepticism and of course I agree with that. Someone may run a better simulation in the future and that may come up with different results, so we have to keep an open mind about that.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I was basing what the text I quoted in the wiki article had stated.

However, there is something else that bothers me:

If you look at the wiki article, stating where Theia was or had formed, it's in the same orbit at the Earth.

Based upon present understanding of planetary formation, is that the accretion disk around the sun that the planets formed from, was not all the same, different types of material dependent upon distance from the sun (lighter materials further from the sun, heavier towards the sun, etc).

The operating model that we have for Theia means that it formed from the same material that formed the Earth (if in fact it formed in the same orbit).

That would indicate that there would not be too much of a difference between what makes up Earth and what made up Theia. If that holds true, then it would explain the lack of difference.

Of course that hypothesis of mine holds a lot of "Ifs" in it, and dependent upon other theories holding true too!


A lot of problems we have is based on the lack of something else to look at. All four inner planets are very different from each other. We don't have another example to look at see if our models can hold true or not. Until we get to other star systems that have rocky inner planets, and those planets have moons of significant sizes too.

Until then, it will always be theories or hypothesis based on models we create.

Originally posted by eriktheawful
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

I was basing what the text I quoted in the wiki article had stated.

I don't see any way to interpret the wiki article as saying that 90% of the material for the moon came from Earth. However, I certainly admit the simulations that suggest most of the material came from the impactor might be flawed.

Originally posted by eriktheawful
The operating model that we have for Theia means that it formed from the same material that formed the Earth (if in fact it formed in the same orbit).

Yes, I see what you're saying and if this is true then it's enough to make us question the claim that there's only a 1% chance that Earth and Theia could have such similar isotopes. Good point.

Based on this model of a solar system planetary accretion, the idea that two bodies which collided formed in the same orbit doesn't seem to be the most likely scenario to me:


Solar system formation seems to be a chaotic process in the simulations I've seen like this.

I'm not very scientific, but I watch a lot of history channel and sci channel.

The Theia hypothesis is the excepted theory because it explains more than just the moon.

The earth's core makes up 30 or 33% of earth's mass this makes earth the densest planet in our solar system.

They believe Theia was made up of mostly heavy elements like iron, when it collided with earth it sank to the center, and that's why earths core is so big compared to the size of the planet.

The program I watched also said the moon is made mostly from the earths crust.

Intetesting...
i mean do people really think we are the first ones to exist in the universe? People/things have existed long befor us and more will come. players come players go.....
Nature puts nothing to waste.

For me I believe the Ancient Sumerian hypothesis about our moon, perhaps the OP would be interested in reading the info in this link:
www.fourwinds10.net...

reply to post by Mads1987

When I first saw the title, I feared this would be about some ancient aliens theory of how a former civilization destroyed their world in a nuclear holocaust, and subsequently created the moon in the process.

When I 1st saw the title I was HOPING it would be about that LOL

Awesome Hypothesis! Thank you for bringing Attention to these ideas! Though we may never fully understand
the reasons behind the formation of earths moon, it's a major reason for the formation of life on our little world here. It gives me a comforting feeling looking at it, provides wonder looking upon it and sometimes lights up our nights! The mystery of its origins inspires our imaginations and stimulates our thoughts! The pale luminosity of its features brings an essential romantic feeling to young lovers!
I hope we never know the reason behind this mystery, so that the moon will go on to inspire our descendants well into the future! For as long as we wander in wonder we aspire to greatness!

Critics blast nuclear 'bomb' theory of moon's birth:
www.newscientist.com...

The main reason Meijer and van Westrenem concocted their scenario was to explain why the composition of the moon and the Earth's mantle are identical when the moon should have been contaminated by material from the impactor. "The simple answer is that the impactor formed from material at the same distance from the sun as the Earth, and therefore had the same composition," says Gott. This could have happened if the body formed at either the stable Lagrange-4 or Lagrange-5 points, 60° behind and ahead of the Earth in its orbit around the sun. This idea was proposed by Gott and his Princeton colleague Edward Belbruno in 2004. "The impact scenario, with the impactor coming from a Lagrange point, fits pretty much all the observations," says Gott.

Originally posted by wildespace
Critics blast nuclear 'bomb' theory of moon's birth:
www.newscientist.com...

Thanks for posting that link. Some of the critics don't even understand the hypothesis, as this remark by Gott illustrates:

"But how do you explain Charon, the big icy moon of Pluto? That would require an 'ice-reactor', which is a nonsensical idea!"

van Westrenen and de Meijer didn't try to hypothesize any such origin for other moons. The authors wrote a reply in the comments section which seems reasonable to me, as do some of the other comments noting they made a hypothesis and suggested a way to test it. If the hypothesis is tested and shown to be false they seem perfectly willing to accept that. I don't really see the harm in testing it, especially since China may be sending men to the moon anyway...collecting some samples might not be that hard for them while they are already there, and then we could determine the proper fate of the hypothesis with evidence rather than unrelated decrees about ice reactors on Pluto.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

As you know we have man-made nuclear reactors, and as seen in Chernobyl they have gone critical. We do know that there have been natural nuclear reactors:

But there was no nuclear explosion at Chernobyl. And I'm pretty sure the hypothetical natural reactor was not a really fast one.

In order for a nuclear chain reaction to reach a fission rate necessary for a nuclear explosion the material needs to be highly refined. That's why there is a difference between reactor grade material and weapons grade material. Reactor grade material cannot cause a fission explosion.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

As you know we have man-made nuclear reactors, and as seen in Chernobyl they have gone critical. We do know that there have been natural nuclear reactors:

But there was no nuclear explosion at Chernobyl.

How can you say that so confidently when the experts don't seem to know the cause of the second explosion? I don't think it's been ruled out as a possible cause.

Chernobyl Disaster

However, the sheer force of the second explosion, and the ratio of xenon radioisotopes released during the event, indicate that the second explosion could have been a nuclear power transient; the result of the melting core material, in the absence of its cladding, water coolant and moderator, undergoing runaway prompt criticality similar to the explosion of a fizzled nuclear weapon.[43] This nuclear excursion released 40 billion joules of energy, the equivalent of about ten tons of TNT. The analysis indicates that the nuclear excursion was limited to a small portion of the core.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

That is not a description of a nuclear explosion. It is a description of a transition from delayed to prompt criticality. There have been other cases similar events. They are not nuclear explosions.
en.wikipedia.org...

Though dangerous and frequently lethal to humans within the immediate area, the critical mass formed is still incapable of producing a nuclear detonation of the type seen in fission bombs, as the reaction lacks the many engineering elements that are necessary to induce explosive supercriticality.

en.wikipedia.org...

The Moon's only been around Earth for 20,000-30,000 years.

There's ancient writing that talk about the days before there was a moon. It's only been around Earth for a short period of time.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Had there been a nuclear explosion at the Chernobyl reactor, there wouldn't be a building left. And the sleeping inhabitants of Pripyat (only 3 km from the power station) would have certainly woken up and noticed (if they didn't get killed by the blast.

Does this look like a site of a nuclear explosion to you?


There was a power excursion (i.e. a sudden increase in energy released), but not a nuclear explosion.