(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists at the Institute of Computational Cosmology at Durham University (England) have developed the most detailed supercomputer model to uncover an alternative origin of the moon.
Almost immediately after a collision with a giant space object, a moon-like object formed in orbit around the Earth.
Astronomers have simulated hundreds of different collisions, varying the angle and speed of the collision, as well as the masses and rotations of the two colliding bodies, looking for scenarios that could explain the emergence of the modern Earth-Moon system.
The calculations were performed using the open source SWIFT model.
It turned out that lower-resolution simulations can miss important aspects of large-scale collisions, allowing researchers to detect features that were not available in previous studies.
High-resolution simulations yielded a lunar satellite, and additional details showed how its outer layers are enriched with material originating from Earth.
If most of the Moon formed immediately after the giant impact, then this could also mean that there was less melt during formation than in standard theories, according to which the Moon grew inside a debris disk around the Earth.
Depending on the subsequent solidification, various internal structures of the satellite can be theoretically predicted.
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