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The current accepted idea for the Moon's formation is the "Big Splat" hypothesis (which is not the same as the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe). It's also called the "giant impactor" hypothesis by those with smaller senses of humor.
In short, a Mars-sized body hit the forming Earth a glancing blow. The cores of Earth and impactor merged, and a great deal of molten rock was thrown into space. Some of this rock fell back to Earth, some went into Solar orbit, and the rest formed the Moon. This happened long before the seas formed. See the article about the Moon in Wikipedia, and its links in the Origin and History section. Fred
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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time." -- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684 |
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Ummm, no. That is really really wrong, so far wrong it is hard to know where to start.
Well, for starters, the Moon is older than 65 million years. Therefore, the surface of the Earth could not have spun out into space to form the moon 65 million years ago. Therefore, the basic premise put forward in that web site is wrong.
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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward "Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender |
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Suntrack2 seemed to be trying to say something I've thought about for a while. I might be wrongly projecting, though, since it is an idea I've had for a while which suntrack2 reminded me of. Anyway, my question, and possibly suntrack2's if I understood him/her correctly, is this:
Could the same event that resulted in the formation of the moon also have resulted in the Earth's uneven crust thickness, which is what gives us separate seas and continents now? After all, we know that the crust is that way, with a handful of higher areas (continents) and a handful of lower areas (oceans), so there's got to be some reason why. I've seen an animation of what the lunagenic impact would have looked like from space. The strike is a bit off-center, so it opens up one side of the planet like an expanding clamshell but leaves the other mostly intact. It stands to reason that the later-reconstituted planet could have had two sides that were, even if only slightly, different in composition (such as with one side incorporating more of the foreign object's mass than the other side) and/or structure (such as with one side more thoroughly vertically sorted according to material densities than the other is, due to having been stirred and mixed more thoroughly and recently). And just a two-sided arrangement, with a giant continent on one side and a giant ocean on the other, could have then broken apart into what we've got now. |
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The problem with that is that Pangaea was formed less than a billion years ago by the Appalachian Mountains.
So the Moon is a lot older than any of the known continents. It turns out that there were earlier supercontinents than Pangaea, but still none as old as the Moon. |
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If the light portions of the crust hadn't been drawn away by the impact then wouldn't Earth look very different, possibly a single continental plate covering the entire surface, maybe covered shallow seas?
Is the impactor that hit the early earth possibly the planetary core that may have been forming bwteen mars and Jupiter?
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From Here
The abundances of radioactive elements in rock samples can be used to tell the age of the rock in a process called Radioactive Dating. When such techniques are applied to the Lunar rock samples, one finds the following: ---snip---- ...Lunar Highlands rocks returned by Apollo 16 are about 4 billion years old. The oldest Lunar rock found was located by Apollo 17 and appears to be about 4.5 billion years old. .
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Yes, moon rock samples. From Apollo and from the Soviet landers.
The problem with the idea of crustal thicknesses being caused by the moon creation event is that the moon creation event happened very early in the Earth's history, and basically the Earth must have been completely molten -- so there really wasn't a solid crust right after the impact. Think about the huge amount of energy that was imparted by the impact -- where a core of a Mars size planet merged with the core of the proto-earth, and massive quantities of material were splattered out into orbit. That amount of energy would have destroyed any solid crust that already existed.
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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward "Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender |
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Suntrak2.. read what Aurora is telling you. He is right on the button, correct.
Nothing to do with the big bang as our sun was not around then. It is a second generation star. The planetary disk that the Earth has condensed from was a chaotic place. That collision some 4.5 or so billion years ago would have been spectacular. The Earth survived it and the Moon is the result. |
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The moltenness of the "crust" when it happened doesn't contradict the idea that the impact made the planet's two sides different from each other in some trait that influenced the form the crust would solidify into later on.
Also, is there any other explanation anyone here has heard of for why some big chunks of the crust are thin and some are thick? |
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According to the website eburacum45 posted
"1. Samples from Mare Imbrium and the Ocean of Storms brought back by Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 are about 3.5 billion years old, which is comparable to the oldest rocks found on the surface of the Earth." If there are rocks on earth of equivalent age as the moon rocks then that allows for the implication that the two share a common source, i.e. the moon was ejected from the earth's crust. |
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The crust is thicker under the continents. It is thinnest in the rift zones, such as the mid-Atlantic ridge where the plates are pulling apart and molten material is flowing upward to fill in. The plates move. The pattern of continents we see today has nothing to do with how the Earth looked 4 billion years ago, everything has changed since then.
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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward "Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender |
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Both rifts and collision zones exist both on continents (thick crust) and out at sea (thin crust). Perhaps your point is that if left in operation long enough, collisions lift and thicken the crust and rifts thin out and lower it, so that, for example, the African rift valley would end up under water if it were to continue spreading long enough. But giving that as an answer to the question of how we ever got whole plates of such different thicknesses in the first place requires, on the flipside, that collision zones must have once created entire continental plates (or one supercontinental plate that later split up) instead of just pushing up little edge islands...
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If there are rocks on earth of equivalent age as the moon rocks then that allows for the implication that the two share a common source, i.e. the moon was ejected from the earth's crust.
If it was ejected then the rocks would share more charactoristics than just age. Pre-Apollo there were two main ideas behind the formation of the moon. 1) Separate formation and capture: Here both the Earth and the moon acreated from the disc and formed, then the moon passed close enough to the Earth that it was captured and become our moon. 2) Part of Earth: Under this theory that moon had been part of the Earth's crast, but it's rotation had forced the crust out and it had broken off and formed the moon. The belief was that the crust in the area that is the Pacific Ocean has been flung off and as now the Moon. Sample analysis proved both wrong, with one of the most amazing discoveries being the total lack of any bonded water. On earth water is everywhere, including in the planet's core. Rocks all have it bonded into them on a chemical level, you can't get away from it. The moon however has none. That means that the rocks the moon is made of much have been hot at the time the moon formed, and all volitiles, such as water, were lost before it started cooling. Neither the separate accresion nor the part of Earth theory work for this, so the Impactor Theory come into being.
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Continental crust is much lighter in weight than oceanic basaltic crust. So when oceanic crust collides with continental crust, the oceanic plate subducts downwards. At a certain depth the oceanic crust heats up and melts the continental crust above it. If this melted continental crust reaches the surface, you get volcanoes spewing lava that further increases the height of the continental plate.
When the earth first began to solidify the lighter weight minerals would have floated to the top, so there may have been a short period of time when the earth was covered with continental crust, but rising basaltic magma and volcanic hotspots would have quickly broken the plates up and plate tectonics would have begun. |
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