The Moon Was Created When An Alien World Smashed Into Earth              

Scientists have been studying moon rocks brought back to Earth by the Apollo astronauts for years, but to understand their true place in the universe, researchers needed technology that wasn’t available until recently.

Now, researchers have determined the moon was formed when an exo-planet slammed into Earth while the solar system was still in its infancy, according to a new study from Washington University published this week in Nature.

While the Earth was still young, a meandering Mars-sized celestial object slammed into our planet, and the resulting debris formed the moon, assistant professor and lead author of the study, Kun Wang, told Gizmodo.

“We’re still remeasuring the old Apollo samples from the ’70s, because the tech has been developing in recent years. We can measure much smaller differences between Earth and the moon, so we found a lot of things we didn’t find in the 1970s. The old models just could not explain the new observations.”

Scientists have been trying to explain the formation of the moon for decades, and until now, they’ve largely been operating under the theory that it was created when an alien world lightly grazed our planet.

If that was true, then researchers studying the moon rocks would have discovered they were mostly composed of material from that passing celestial body, but that’s not what they found. Instead, chemical tests showed isotopic compounds in the moon rocks were the same as those found on Earth, Wang told the scientific journal Room.

“Our results provide the first hard evidence that the impact really did (largely) vaporize Earth.”

The new study suggests the passing celestial body slammed into proto-Earth nearly vaporizing our planet and creating a massive dust cloud that spread out over an area 500 times the size of our world. That massive cloud eventually cooled off and condensed to form the moon, as Wang told Gizmodo.

“We need a much, much bigger impact to form a moon according to our study. The giant impact itself should be called extremely giant impact.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRNi4BwhTWg

This new theory is important not only because it changes our ideas of how the moon was formed, but also because it changes our understanding of how the solar system was formed. The process was much more violent than previously thought, Wang told Gizmodo.

“Everything we know about the early solar system is from our study of meteorites and lunar samples, all those really really old rocks.”

That wasn’t the only time the Earth has been struck by planet-sized objects. A related study says the only reason life was able to evolve on our world is because the Earth was struck by a Mercury-like planet in the distant past.

While Earth was still forming into the planet we know today, the surface temperature was extremely high (think molten lava). The intense heat would have melted away any carbon molecules, which are the building blocks of all life as we know it.

Even if all the Earth’s carbon hadn’t melted away, it would have been drawn down into the center of the planet after bonding with iron-rich alloys, according to Space.com.

The Experimental Petrology Rice Team, which studies the structure of rocks at Rice University in Texas, wanted to explain how Earth was able to keep its carbon while the planet’s surface was so hot.

Previous theories suggested the Earth’s carbon did melt away, but new deposits of the element came to our planet on crashing meteors or comets that struck our world in the distant past.

Using hydraulic presses to squeeze rocks at high pressure, the researchers simulated an early Earth environment. They discovered that when subjected to extreme pressure, carbon doesn’t bond with other elements found in the Earth’s core. This led them to theorize that an early version of a planet like Mercury could have slammed into Earth in the distant past and deposited its carbon on the surface, petrologist Rajdeep Dasgupta told Space.com.

“The core of that planet would go directly to the core of our planet, and the carbon-rich mantle would mix with Earth’s mantle.”

What do you think of the news that the solar system was much more violent than previously thought?

[Image via iStock/ Getty Images]