Ask a Question
or
Create a Poll
  1. Home /
  2. Questions /
  3. Science
  4. / Physical Sciences
  5. / Space And Astronomy
  6. / The Moon

by wickedwillie on February 22nd, 2005

wickedwillie

Question

Help answer this question below.

What is the origin of our moon?

Share:
Other

Answers. Showing one answer.

  • by trashcity on February 23rd, 2005

    trashcity

    This is the subject of scientific debate: there is no universally-accepted explanation. Here are some of the more common theories:

    The moon broke off from the Earth's crust due to centrifugal force, leaving an ocean basis as a scar, but this would require the Earth to have been spinning too fast.

    The Condensation or Coformation theory suggests the Moon and Earth formed about the same time from accretion disk of material surrounding the sun. However, there are differences in composition - notably, a lack of iron in the moon - which is hard to explain if they were formed from the same "stuff".

    Other theories suggest the moon formed elsewhere, and was captured by the Earth's pull, or was formed from a debris field resulting from another cosmic collision. But the currently favored one says the moon was formed from the material thrown out of a semi-molten Earth when something (around the size of Mars!) crashed into it:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Impact_theory

    Comments

    • Very good. The last theory is the more popular of the three in the scientific community.

      guitarist6987876

      by guitarist6987876 on October 3rd, 2005

    • Like
    • Report

    1 comment | Post one | Permalink

Want to attach an image to your answer? Click here.

Did this answer your question? If not, then ask a new question or create a poll.

More Questions. Additional questions in this category.

You're reading What is the origin of our moon?

Follow us on Facebook!

Related Ads

Related Questions

Professionally Researched

Answerbag

a Demand Media company