Origin of the Moon
“Always remember we are under the same sky, looking at the same moon.” – Maxine Lee
The moon has been part of this world since long before life began. It is the same moon of your grandparents and their grandparents.It is the same moon that lit the skies for Columbus and his men as they crossed the Atlantic. It is the same moon that illuminated the great pyramids as they were being built. This same moon shone for the dinosaurs, the tetrapods, the first sea sponge, and even the very first prokaryotic form of life.
However, this moon, just like the earth, had a beginning. There are many theories as to how it got stuck in earth’s orbit, but above all the others there is one that mostly accepted. There is a second theory that became popular due to the work of Rachel Carson in the 50’s, and only until recently is that theory being revisited.
Most scientist accept that there was an event that led to the creation of everything. Based on the trajectory of all the galaxies moving away from each other, the singular event that might have created the universe was the Big Bang. From this bang came the material to form all planets, stars, and dark matter to surround them.
If you are familiar with the principles of matter, then you know that high energy will create faster moving particles which take up more space.Lower energy particles take up less space. Also, denser particles will settle quicker than less dense particles.
Take water for example. If you heat water, you are adding energy to it forcing the molecules to move faster in relation to each other.You observe this as boiling water, but the end result is gas formation, which we know as steam. These particles are extremely high energy, enough to burn yourself with, and take up a huge area of space.
Now if you were to take energy away from the water, the molecules would move less and collectively form a dense solid mass; ice. This process is called cooling. The particles from all three states are the same, hydrogen and oxygen, but the physical state of it is different.
In another example, let’s take blood. Blood is a mixture of many things, including water, proteins, metals, lipids, carbohydrates, and minerals. What happens when you add unidirectional force to the blood, ie centrifuge?The blood begins to separate. The more dense particles will settle to the bottom of the vial and the less dense will sit at the top.
In order to understand how this planet formed you must understand these two principles. Because, after the Big Bang, there was nothing but pure energy, in scattered direction. Elements of all kind, known and unknown, traveled across space, crashing into one another as they did. Energy was transferred from one to another, the same way a cue ball will slow after it crashes into another billiard ball.
In the same way that you could kick a soccer ball and create spin, the force of these particles created spin onto each other, resulting in centripetal force. Centripetal force is the source of gravity, and it draws other objects to it, much like a centrifuge will pull on the elements of blood.
At this point, most everything is still in a high energy gaseous state, but they are beginning to collect. So one ball of gas spinning through space might crash into another spinning gas ball, possibly creating an even bigger ball of gas, but now spinning at a much faster rate. The faster spin generates a higher centripetal force and the gravitation pull of that gas ball is strong enough to pull in all the other particles around it.
Now, just like the centrifuge, the higher density particles will settle as close to the source of pull. These denser particles also contain the most amount of electrons, which is just a more stable micro version of the gas ball in formation. So the high energy source will consolidate itself to the center of the ball. Less energy on the outside leaves the opportunity for state change, ie liquids and solids.
Ultimately, this is how the crust of the earth was formed.What was once an extremely high energy gas settled into an extremely high energy magma, which is still what lies underneath the earth’s crust today. Then the magma settled into a solidified mass. At some point, when the crust was cool enough, the still swarming least dense gas particles began to change state.These hydrogen and oxygen particles have a high affinity towards each other and so with less energy, they were able to bind and fall to the earth as water.
These rains, which lasted hundreds of years, fell onto the crust of the earth, dragging with them the salt of the earth. It was only with this salt that the energy potential of the earth was able to manifest into life. This happened first through basic mechanisms like osmosis and diffusion, that created micro patterns of systematic action, and ultimately transformed into the first half-living prokaryotic cell. And life as we understand it was born.
So, when during this whole process did the earth inherit a moon?
As I mentioned, the most accepted theory is that a much smaller planet crashed into the earth during its formation and part of that planet remained in space stuck in our orbit as our moon. This is highly convenient because it gives ration to the theory that a crash was needed to slow the spinning of the earth to cool its outer shell enough to form life.
However, much like what Rachel Carson wrote in her book TheSea Around Us, current theory is circling back to the possibility that the moon actually came from the earth. I will explain.
When the earth was in its proto-form, which is a fancy way to say it was covered in hot liquid magma, a smaller planet collided into it.Rachel Carson describes this process as a tsunami-like response that continually increased in size due to the changes in centripetal force of the earth, until it broke free from the earth to form the moon, and leaving behind it a massive scar to the earth that we see now as the Mariana Trench.
Researchers from Nature Geoscience ran simulations for the event and found that if the moon was formed from a planetary crash, it would be 80% foreign and 20% terrestrial, but instead it is the opposite. Not only is the moon composed of the same granites and basalts as our ocean floor, but it lacks an iron core. This means it had to have been created from the lesser dense material of a planet, our planet.
Whether a correction in this theory will happen anytime soon, no one knows. With all that is going on in the world, we have too much going on in front of us to look above. It is, however, that with just a glance you can capture the moon and feel for a second that it comes from the same energy that is in you now.
Before the concept of time, it was the moon that was born from the earth, which was created from the energy source of all life ever, from this earth or not. And that should be enough to slow you down and let life permeate.
-Dr G
