Astronomy Buff

Where Did The Moon Come From?

by Tony on October 22nd, 2007

This post will be of particular interest to all of the werewolves out there because, let’s face it, the Moon makes their lives somewhat inconvenient. It must be very hard to have to always clear your calendar on that one day in the month the Moon is full. Blue Moons are particularly irritating, I’m sure.
It is the smart werewolf indeed who takes the time to learn more about that which affects them so profoundly. Being a scientist, I can’t really speak to the mysterious forces acting on werewolves during the full Moon since studying the effect usually ends with the astronomer being eaten. Because of this, there isn’t much in the literature on the subject.

It’s not like astronomers haven’t tried, mind you. I have myself reviewed a couple of papers that were submitted to journals, sadly though, they didn’t make it for obvious reasons. Here’s an example:

Today I observed Tim, a subject that coincidentally disappears on the day of every full moon. During this month’s full Moon, I’m going to follow Tim, tracing his behavior throughout the day and chronicle what I see. This paper will outline my observations and AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH…

As you can see, there’s not enough here to publish really. (I know, he wouldn’t bother to write AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH, he’d just say it. Oh, you Holy Grail fans…)

So it looks like the full Moon/werewolf issue will have to wait to be fully understood, perhaps until some better protective suits for astronomers are developed.

In this post, I’m will instead focus on some of the things science HAS learned about the Moon, perhaps looking at the facts can lead us on the path to finding out why werewolves have such a bad day once a month.

Let’s start with the basics, namely, where did the Moon come from?

The short answer is that no one knows for sure, but there are four traditional hypotheses:

1. The Moon broke off of the Earth. This is called the fission hypothesis.
2. The Moon came from elsewhere and was captured by the Earth’s gravity.
3. The Moon condensed out of the same material as the rest of the Solar System at about the same time as the Earth.
4. The Moon was formed from the material that was dislodged when something huge collided with Earth.

Of these, number four is probably the correct one. How do we know?

When you look at the stuff the Moon is made of, it contains roughly the same material that makes up the mantle of the Earth. Further, the Earth’s mantle is deficient in iron, and if the Moon was made of material blown out from the Earth’s mantle, then the Moon should also be deficient in iron. It is.

Sometimes, science is so beautiful I wanna cry.

Of course, this information by itself doesn’t PROVE that the Moon was formed this way, there are lots of reasons why the Moon is deficient in iron and is made of similar stuff as the Earth’s mantle. Still, it does support the hypothesis.

This idea of the Moon forming after a giant impact on the Earth is, not surprisingly, known as the Giant Impact hypothesis.

This theory states that a roughly Mars-sized body (named Theia after the mother of the Greek moon goddess) struck the Earth, expelling material from the Earth’s mantle about 4.5 billion years ago. The resulting cloud of Earth-orbiting debris condensed into the Moon.

Image Credit: NASA

Werewolf Photo Credit: FanBoy30

Technorati Tags: giant impact hypothesis, moon, werewolves

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POSTED IN: astronomy education, moon, skewed perspective