posted by @ulaulaman about #Moon formation #astronomy #Earth with Italo Calvino quotes
Our satellite, the Moon, is really fascinating, not only for artists and poets, but also for scientists. For example the first, precise description of the Moon was made by
Galileo Galilei in the
Sidereus Nuncius:
One of the problems that the astronomy try to resolve about the Moon is its origins: for example in the beginning of the Twentieth Century it was developed the
Earth-Moon Theory, that was reviewed by
LeRoy Hughbanks(8):
"The moon," says Prof. Percival Lowell, "did not originate as a separate body, but had its birth in a rib of earth." Doctor Lowell is an ardent sup- porter of "the earth-moon theory," and his views and deductions are frankly stated in his two last scientific works, "Mars as the Abode of Life" and "Evolution of Worlds," both of which are publications of the Macmillan Company, New York.
In the discussion has a really great importance
George Darwin with his works about the
tidal friction(6) and the viscous spheroids
(5):
Following Sir George Darwin, the Moon would have been detached from the Earth because to a solar tide. The attraction of the Sun acted on the covering of lighter rock (granite) as on a fluid, lifting one hand and tearing it to our planet. The waters that covering the entire Earth were largely sucked down by the abyss that had opened by the escape of the Moon (i.e. the Pacific Ocean), leaving uncovered the remaining granite, which fragmented and wrinckled itself into the continents. Without the Moon, the evolution of the life on the Earth, although it had been, would have been very different.(2)
Another good description of the earth-moon theory was given by
Andrew Patterson:
In brief, the theory is that when the earth had cooled, from its molten condition sufficiently to have a crust of solidified matter something like thirty miles thick over its entire surface, it was revolving so rapidly that gravitational attraction and centrifugal force practically balanced each other. For some reason, perhaps some vast and sudden cataclysm, a large portion of this crust was thrown off the earth, and by tidal action was forced gradually outward in a spiral path. In order to form the moon, a mass of this crust about thirty miles thick and of area nearly equal to the combined areas of the present oceans on the earth must have been thrown off. It is supposed that this immense amount of crust was largely taken from the present basin of the Pacific, and that the remaining parts of the earth's crust, while it still floated on a liquid interior, split along an irregular line into two pieces which floated apart, and the gap between these two parts was later filled with the waters of the Atlantic.(7)
But following Gerstenkorn
(11) we could arrive to a variation of this picture:
Following H. Gerstenkorn's calculations(11), developed by H. Alfven(9, 10), Earth's continents would be fragments of the Moon fell on our planet. The Moon in origin would also be a planet gravitating around the Sun, until such time as the proximity to the Earth derailed her from its orbit. Captured by Earth's gravity, the Moon came up more and more, tightening its orbit around us. At one point, the mutual attraction began to deform the surface of the two celestial bodies, raising high waves which were detached fragments whirling in space between Earth and Moon, especially fragments of lunar matter that fell on Earth. Later, under the influence of our tides, the Moon was pushed away to reach its present orbit. But part of the lunar mass, perhaps half, was left on Earth, forming the continents.(3)
