Flying gold sent the moon tilting

• Autores: Jacob Aron
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3049, 2015, pág. 13
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The same space rocks that brought precious metals to Earth's surface may also have knocked the moon's orbit off-kilter, robbing people of a regular light show. They think that the moon formed when a Mars-sized object collided with the proto-Earth around 4.5 billion years ago, splattering material into a disc that eventually coalesced into the moon. There is just one problem: this disc would have been more or less aligned with the planet's equator, as Saturn's rings are. Researchers have come up with a variety of theories to explain this tilt, but none is completely satisfactory, says Robin Canup at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.