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Moon Was Created After an Impact between Earth and Theia

January 31, 2016 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

"An artist's depiction of the collision between Earth and Theia"

The impact between Earth and Theia merged the two planets and created the moon from the debris.

According to a new study, the moon was created after an impact between Earth and Theia 4, 533 billion years ago. The previous theory dictated that our planet’s natural satellite was formed after the two celestial bodies scraped each other. New evidence shows it was not just a scrape, but actually a very powerful impact.

A new study in the Science journal has revealed a link between the rocks that have been brought back from the moon’s surface and normal Earth rock samples. It seems that the two types of rocks indicate the existence of a large deflagration that led to the formation of the natural satellite that orbits our planet.

For the study, the team of researchers used rock samples that were brought back by the three moon expeditions, Apollo 12, 15 and 17 as well as pieces of a meteorite that they believe originated from the moon.

The analysis of the two samples indicated that both had the same levels of oxygen isotopes. This translates to the fact that two celestial bodies have the same origins, and that the moon was most probably formed after a violent impact that detached a portion of the Earth surface.

Cosmochemistry and geochemistry professor at UCLA and lead author of the cited study, Edward Young, says that the oxygen isotopes in the two samples of rocks are indistinguishable. This means that Theia was dispersed equally between the two bodies.

Theia is a planet which existence is hypothesized by astronomers and researchers. According to the theory, the ancient planet was roughly the size of today’s version of Mars. The distance between Theia and Earth was rather small which led, 4,533 million years ago to an impact between the two.

The debris that formed after the impact of the two planets originally formed two smaller artificial satellites. These two forms then collided again to form the moon that we see today in the night sky.
The impact also merged the two planets together, this being a plausible explanation for the increased density of the Earth’s core and for the resemblance of oxygen isotopes from our planet and the natural satellite that orbits around it.

Young explains that the impact is reconstructed using the oxygen atoms’ chemical signature. A rock is made up out of oxygen in a 90 percent proportion. The most common oxygen isotopes found on Earth is O-16 with eight neutrons and eight protons, but there is also O-17, which is heavier due to the extra neutron, and O-18, that is even heavier because it has two neutrons extra.

The ratio in which these isotopes are found in our solar system differs from planet to planet. The rocks collected from the moon have the exact same ratio as the Earth has. This is what led scientists to believe that the moon was created after an impact between earth and Theia.

Image source: www.wikimedia.org

Google Lunar X Prize Competition Date Extended to 2016

December 14, 2014 By Brian Galloway Leave a Comment

Google extended the time limit of Google Lunar X prize for teams.

Google Lunar X Prize is an incentive prize space competition which started in 2007. The X prize foundation along with Google organized it. The chief aim of the competition is to ask private spaceflight teams to launch a robotic spacecraft. The goal of the spacecraft is to land and travel around the surface of the Moon. Additionally, the spacecraft should send significant images and data back to Earth.

The winning team will get a reward of $20 million from Google. Google also promised to offer big prize money for numerous other achievements

Earlier, the biggest tech giant announced to end the competition in December. However, a spokesman of Google declared that the firm has extended the deadline to 2016.

This is the second extension in the deadline of Google Lunar X Prize. Previously, the firm extended the limit from 2012 to 2015.

Unfortunately, this time the postponement comes with some difficult condition. The teams are not allowed to move forward until they present the documentation of a scheduled launch.

Moreover, the X prize reported that up till now not a single team presented any proof. Hence, everyone is eagerly waiting for 31 December 2015.

Scientists Reveal the Secret of Titan’s Hundred Feet High Sand Dunes

December 10, 2014 By Germaine Hicks Leave a Comment

A new research discovered that Titan has really strong winds which form hydrocarbon dunes on the surface of the Moon.

Earlier, scientists believed that winds of Titan are merely 40% strong. However, the new report dismissed all the previous researches. It states that wind of Titan is stronger than this proportion.

Titan is considered as the largest moon of Saturn. It has a comparatively dense atmosphere than the rest of the moons and planets. The atmosphere of titan is around 1.5 times dense than the current atmosphere of the Earth.

It is the only body that has liquid on its surface. However, these lakes composed of natural gases like methane and ethane rather than water.

A recent report reveals that scientists found strange sand dunes on Titan. These dunes are nearly hundred feet tall. However, these dunes are pretty different from the dunes of Mars and Earth.

The research published in Journal Nature reveals that the dunes of Titans are created with hydrocarbon. Researchers carefully examined the data accumulated from the Cassini orbiter. The orbiter has been analyzing Saturn from more than a decade. The spacecraft captured numerous images of the Titan.

The images show seas which are made up of liquid hydrocarbons. However, a few scientists believe that Titan really contains an ocean of liquid water. These oceans are likely to be situated below the frozen surface of Titan.

Devon Burr, a professor of University of Tennessee demonstrates that winds of Titan move faster than the previous supposition of scientists. The findings also describe the entire process of the formation of dune.

A stronger Magnetic Core once existed on the Moon than Earth

December 7, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 1 Comment

After extensive studies, scientists have put forth a theory stating that the moon once might have had a ‘dynamo’ or a molten metal core which could yield a magnetic field stronger than the Earth.

Scientists think that they may have put an end to the 40 year old mystery regarding the un-cited reasons surrounding the rocks collected by NASA’s Apollo astronauts as to how they became magnetized. They theorized that the moon despite having a mass of 1 percent as compared to the Earth contained within itself a molten metallic flowing core which might have had the capacity to generate a global magnetic field.

However, some researchers don’t agree to this, citing reasons that the lunar soil picked up magnetic fields from other impacting asteroids and bodies giving it repeated magnetized effects that shoot up and down.

These new findings pave way to the idea that not only did the moon once had a magnetic heart, but also it was way more into love than what our Earth is today. The study while based on reanalysis of Apollo samples coupled with more data collected from robotic probes, depicts that the moon had a dynamo driven heart some 4.2 to 3.6 billion years ago.

Orion Safely Accomplished its First Test Flight

December 6, 2014 By Brian Galloway Leave a Comment

NASA’s new Orion space vehicle successfully completed its first dramatic test flight on Friday.

Several rocket engineers cried as the spacecraft finished its journey. Rob Navias, Mission Controller shouted with happiness “There is your new spacecraft, America”.

It was the second hot return after the Apollo’s moon flight. The space vehicle travels with an even faster than the Apollo’s moon program. It accomplished its first test flight in a short time period of four and half hours. This four hour long voyage of Orion definitely paved the way for numerous space exploration programs.

The government agency send Orion at this high altitude to prepare the crew module up for a 20,000-mph, 4,000 degree. It was surely the most difficult part of the test flight. The agency has also designed a special heat shield to protect the spacecraft from any damage

NASA intends to send astronauts to Mars and the Moon through the Orion spacecraft. After the test flight the government agency announced that the next Orion flight will launch after four years. However, the flight which takes astronauts out of the Earth is nearly seven years away. The budget issues are the main reason behind the long gap between the second flight and the crew flight.

Mike Sarafin, the main flight director stated that they will try hard to continue this space exploration journey. Although it was an unmanned mission but it felt like everyone was on board.

Study Reveals, Long-Ago Moon’s Magnetic Field Might Have Trumped Earths’

December 6, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 2 Comments

According to the researchers, the moon once had a magnetic heart, which helped the moon produce a magnetic field stronger than Earth’s now have.

Though, numerous riddles linger about the magnetic field of the moon, for example, what fueled it and when it’s finished, the researchers added.

The moon today does not have an inclusive magnetic field. Nonetheless, asteroids that space explorers gathered amid the Apollo missions proposed the moon once had a magnetic field billions of years back.

However, researchers were unsure whether the moon created a magnetic field the same way Earth does, or if the magnetic fields seen on the moon were rather generated by external powers. For example, celestial effects on the moon could have flickered super-heated plasma that produced solid, concise magnetic fields, clarifying the charged rocks the space travelers found.

In the previous six years or thereabouts, nonetheless, a new era of scientific methods and computer imitations has now presented a solid evidence that the moon may have had a magnetic center like Earth’s.

Magnetic fields are generated by electric currents.

“We believe planets produce magnetic fields by moving electrically directing liquids inside them,” said study co-creator Benjamin Weiss, a planetary researcher at MIT. Streaming metal in the Earth’s center makes the heart of the planet a dynamo — a generator of electrical current — and this dynamo creates the Earth’s magnetic field.

If the moon had a dynamo that produced a magnetic field, that could yield key impending into its concealed internal structure.

Weiss told Space.com, “The crucial inquiry of lunar science for more than four decades, even before the Apollo missions, is to what degree is the moon an unmelted primordial body like numerous space rocks, instead of a dissolved developed body with a multilayered structure, which can have a metallic center with a magnetic field.”

“The moon is halfway between a planet and a little body like a space rock, so building, whether the moon had a primordial dynamo could help demonstrate that it was a very advanced body separated into layers like Earth,” he added. “This would let you know about the derivation of the moon — a few models say the moon began off frosty and unmelted, while others propose it was made from a monster affect and foresee it ought to have been scorched.”

As per the recent scans of magnetized lunar rocks that demonstrate no proof of impacts from celestial effects now give solid confirmation that the moon had a magnetic field 4.25 billion to 3.56 billion years back, no less than 1 billion years after the moon created.

Weiss said, “Earth’s magnetic field is presently 50 microteslas in potency. The early moon may have had a magnetic field that was greater, perhaps up to more than 70 microteslas.”

It stays questionable what may have fueled this shockingly exceptional lunar magnetic field. “It’s difficult to see how the moon’s magnetic field could be as tough as it appeared given how the moon has a little center,” Weiss said. “The moon’s center is perhaps 1/5 to 1/7 the radius of the moon, while the Earth’s center is possibly one-half the planetary range. This implies the surface of the moon is much far from its center than you see with Earth. Since magnetic fields fall quickly in force with distance, it’s tricky to see how the moon could have had a magnetic field that was that that tough throughout its surface.”

All known dynamos of planets are for the most part thought to be fueled by convection, the whipping of liquids because of heat. Given the extent of the moon — just around a quarter of Earth’s distance — the moon ought to have cooled hastily. So a lunar dynamo fueled just by convection ought to have endured just for a couple of hundred million years at most, until around 4.1 billion years ago.

Though, novel models propose that the moon’s innards may have been less gooey than suspected, and that radioactive material inside the moon could have kept it hotter. These elements may have empowered a convection-fueled lunar dynamo to last until maybe 3.5 billion or 3.4 billion years ago.

There are a lot more extraordinary systems that researchers have proposed could have fueled the lunar dynamo.

“One includes smacking the moon sideways with vast effects from space rocks, perhaps a bundle of times,” Weiss said. “You could also use the fact that the moon’s spin wobbles over time, known as precession, and in the past, it wobbled more intensely when it was closer to Earth, and that could likewise inspire movement to power a dynamo. Both these instruments are not known in any planetary body today, and would speak to better approaches for producing magnetic fields.”

NASA’s Lunar Mission One; A Chance to Bury Stuff on Moon

November 19, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

NASA offered a chance of immortality on the moon to thousands of people.

Recently, NASA announced a New Lunar Mission that will take place in the next 10 years. The primary purpose of this mission is to land a robotic probe on the moon. The robotic probe will determine whether scientist can set up human base on the moon or not.

The agency intends to raise £500m through public donations for this particular project. The people who donate money for the new mission would be allowed to incorporate their sample hair, photos and text in a time capsule. Later on, NASA will bury that time capsule under the lunar surface.

The board of researchers utilized Kickstarter for the collection of money. Kickstarter is a global fundraising platform which promises to give life to creative projects. The first stage of fund raising will begin in the next few weeks.

However, NASA has fixed different price rate, according to the thing. For instance, a short message will cost a few pounds, whereas as a compressed video will cost $200.

A few of the really well known researchers such as Prof Monica Grady, the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees and Prof Brain Cox will support the plan.

David Iron, the head of this project notified that this time government authorities would not be able to fund the space mission. Therefore, scientists requested the public to contribute to the Lunar Mission One. The mission will provide really significant information regarding the origin of Earth and the moon.

At long last NASA finds where their spacecraft smashed into the Moon

October 29, 2014 By Germaine Hicks 2 Comments

NASA has finally learnt where they smashed their spacecraft into the moon. Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) smashed into the moon on April 18, 2014. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has finally captured images of the LADEE debris.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team recently developed a new computer tool to search Narrow Angle Camera before and after image pairs for new craters, the LADEE impact event provided a fun test,” explained LROC Principal Investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University in Tempe. “As it turns there were several small surface changes found in the predicted area of the impact, the biggest and most distinctive was within 968 feet of the spot estimated by the LADEE operations team.”

The Space Agency stated that LADEE’s impact crater was less than 10 feet in diameter primarily because of the fact that the spacecraft was travelling slower when compared to other space objects.

Finding LADEE’s crater was a challenge but using precise Digital Image Processing tools, scientists were able to compare photos before and after impacts in order to locate the right crater.

What’s The Reason Behind Stronger than Expected Wobble of Saturn’s Moon, Mimas

October 18, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 5 Comments

Mimas, Saturn’s smaller ice moon was often believed as the most dullest satellite. But recently a new study revealed that, the humdrum space boulder could have hidden secrets.

According to the recent study published in the ‘Science’ journal; Like other moons, Mimas has been orbiting Saturn for the last ten years under the influence of its parent planet, though there is a difference that Mimas’ orbit wobbles is quite large.

A team of astronomers have been studying the moon using the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft. Radwan Tajeddine, Cornell research associate in astronomy and lead author of the study stated that, “After carefully examining Mimas, we discovered it librates, it delicately wobbles around the moon’s polar axis.”

“We are really excited about this measurement because it may specify much about the satellite’s insides. Nature is basically enabling us to do the same thing that a child does when she shakes a wrapped gift in hopes of figuring out what’s hidden inside.”

The researchers used data collected from Cassini-Huygens spacecraft to create a 3D model of the moon’s orbit and found it wobbles twice as much as it ought. Such wobbles can be caused by the gravity of passing of planetary masses, but Mimas’ motion points to two other possibilities.

The first thing is that the moon’s rocky surface is hiding an ocean deep within the planet. With only 400kms in diameter Mimas won’t have enough mass to have a hot core, but tidal kneading caused by the close proximity of Saturn could provide enough heat for some of the moon’s innards to be liquids. On the basis of 3D modeling, we found that the ocean would have to be around 24 to 31kms beneath the surface of the moon’s crust to account for the wobble. Secondly, the Mimas’ birth left it somewhat abnormal. Mimas is believed to be the smallest body in the solar system to be rounded due to self-gravitation. It has enough mass to shape into a ball without being frayed apart.

According to the astronomers, if a subsurface ocean is present, then it would require a source of interior heat to keep it liquid. But yet again, the moon’s surface does not display any sign of such heating. Instead of internal heat, a possible mechanism leading to a subsurface ocean might be a gravitational effect that Saturn has on Mimas.

Tips To Watching The Blood Moon

October 7, 2014 By Brian Galloway Leave a Comment

It’s always fun to have a celestial event like an eclipse. These events bring people out of their homes and form a sense of community while sharing a rare experience together. This Blood Moon event is one of them and watching it the right way can make the event more fun.

Tonight’s Blood Moon is visible in North America but best in the Pacific Ocean region. Weather and clouds permitting the show where the Earth’s shadow passes over the Moon should bring some spectacular results. It’s called a Blood Moon because this phenomenon has the Earth’s atmosphere that is full of particles bends light giving the Moon a rusty red or blood color. This is the second Blood Moon of the year 2014.

The show starts at 1:17 am Pacific Time for the folks on the West Coast of America and will go on until 6:32 am. East Coast times are 4:17 am to 7:01 am. East Coasters won’t be able to see the entire event as the Moon will set below the horizon before the event is finished but it should give one amazing show nonetheless.

If one lives in a major city where there might be light pollution, so many lights that it dims the view of the sky, the event should still be visible and enjoyable as the Moon is so prominent. Clouds are the other problem. If there’s substantial cloud cover check your local weather to see when it might clear up. If the clouds are spotty you’ll have to time yourself and then wait until the clouds pass over and there’s a break in their formation. Should all this not work the online option is to fire up the computer or television screen and go to the NASA website and watch the event. Those with hi definition sets will see things unencumbered with NASA data and perhaps commentary. Check your social media too to see if anyone is streaming the NASA feed and you can chat along with others.

This Blood Moon is also significant in that the Moon will be in what is called perigee, or closest it comes to Earth during the Moon’s orbit. That should make for even better viewing and a more exciting experience. The Moon should look 5.3% larger than the Blood Moon that occurred in April of 2014.

If you miss this eclipse then don’t worry there will be another in about a year in September 2015 so break out the lawn chairs and tailgate supplies and prepare.

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