Where does the moon originate from?

Question

I am told to research theries about the origin of the moon. Could anyone please help? Thank you.

Answer 1

Back when the solar system was younger (4.5 billion years ago), the Earth was hit by a giant impact with something about the size of Mars today. The dust and gas from the impact froze in space, then clumped together to form the Moon.

The links below have more information.

Answer 2

God made it.
Evolutionary astronomers have great trouble accounting for the origin of the moon. There have generally been three competing hypotheses, but they all have serious physical problems:

1. Fission theory, invented by the astronomer George Darwin (son of Charles). He proposed that the earth spun so fast that a chunk broke off, with the Pacific Ocean as the probable scar (or a modification of the theory that had the earth molten at the time). But this theory is universally discarded today. First, the moon is too chemically different from the earth; second, the earth could never have spun fast enough to throw a moon into orbit; and third, the escaping moon would have been shattered while within the Roche Limit.

2. Capture theory — the moon was wandering through the solar system, and was captured by Earth’s gravity. But for one approaching body to enter into orbit around another, it would need to lose a lot of energy, which is why spacecraft sent to orbit other planets are designed with retro-rockets. Otherwise the approaching body would have been ‘slingshotted’ rather than captured, a phenomenon the Voyager probes exploited. Finally, even a successful capture would have resulted in an elongated comet-like orbit.

3. Condensation (or co-creation) theory — earth and moon formed at about the same time from the same portion of the swarm of planetesimals which supposedly orbited the sun in the early phases of the evolution of the solar system. However, it’s unlikely that the gravitational attraction could have been strong enough, and it doesn’t account for the moon’s low iron content.

Answer 3

Accepted theory is,that around 4.5 billion as Earth was forming formed years ago, other smaller planetary bodies were also growing. One of these hit earth late in Earth's growth process, blowing out rocky debris. A fraction of that debris went into orbit around the Earth and aggregated into the moon.

some other ideas that have come up are :
1.that the moon is a sister world that formed in orbit around Earth as the earth formed. This theory failed because it could not explain why the moon lacks iron.

2. another is that the moon formed somewhere else in the solar system where there was little iron, and then was captured into orbit around Earth. This failed when moon rocks showed the same isotope composition.

3. that early earth spun so fast that it spun off the moon. This idea would produce a moon similar to Earth's mantle, but it failed when analysis of the total angular momentum and energy involved indicated that the present earth/moon system could not form in this way.

Answer 4

There are various schools of thought on the matter.


Formation
Several mechanisms have been suggested for the Moon's formation. Early speculation proposed that the Moon broke off from the Earth's crust because of centrifugal forces, leaving a basin (presumed to be the Pacific Ocean) behind as a scar. This fission concept, however, requires too great an initial spin of the Earth. Others speculated that the Moon formed elsewhere and was captured into Earth's orbit. However, the conditions required for this capture mechanism to work (such as an extended atmosphere of the Earth for dissipating energy) are not too probable. The coformation hypothesis posits that the Earth and the Moon formed together at the same time and place from the primordial accretion disk. In this theory, the Moon forms from material surrounding the proto-Earth, similar to the way in which the planets formed around the Sun. Some suggest that this hypothesis fails to adequately explain the depletion of metallic iron in the Moon. A major deficiency with all of these hypotheses is that they cannot easily account for the high angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system.

Today, the giant impact theory for forming the Earth-Moon system is widely accepted by the scientific community. In this theory, the impact of a Mars-sized body into the proto-Earth is postulated to have put enough material into circumterrestrial orbit to form the Moon. Given that planetary bodies are believed to have formed by the hierarchical accretion of smaller to larger sized bodies, giant impact events such as this are thought to have affected most planets. Computer simulations modeling this impact can account for the angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system, as well as the small size of the lunar core. Unresolved questions concerning this theory are the relative sizes of the proto-Earth and impactor, and the proportion of material from the proto-Earth and impactor that contribute to making the Moon. The formation of the Moon is believed to have occurred at 4.527 ± 0.01 billion years, about 30 to 50 million years after the origin of the solar system.

Answer 5

The Mars size impact theory is the one I would go with too - Infact I am sure I have read recently that they have recently found links between Mars & the Earth in some of the latest missions?

Answer 6

Go with the answers about a Mars-sized object colliding with Earth several billion years ago. There's also a great animation of the event at this website ==>http://terpsichore.stsci.edu/~summers/viz/scviz/kokubo.html

Answer 7

From the debris when the proto Earth collided with The Great Impactor 3.9 billion years ago.

Answer 8

Go here for your answer

http://www.psi.edu/projects/moon/moon.html

Answer 9

the planet earth ( ithink )

Answer 10

No one knows for sure.