The Giant Impact Theory: How Was The Moon Created?

The moon has orbited the earth for over 4 billion years. Many scientists hold different opinions on how the moon was really formed. There are three main thoughts on how the moon was formed, these being:the giant impact theory, the co-formation theory and the capture theory. But the question still remains, how was the moon created?

The giant impact theory, Space.com thinks that the giant impact theory is probably the most valid of the three,this theory holds the idea that the as earth orbited the sun in its early days it collided with many other smaller objects (asteroids) that were travelling through space at the time, and absorbed them into its growing mass. Because of these collisions the earth grew to almost the size it is today. In an

The way it is thought to have worked is that the gravity in the early solar system would have bound particles together at the same time as the earth was forming.This explains why we see such a similar collection of materials in both the moon and the earth, this theory also backs the positioning of the moon itself in our solar system. All though the moon consists of many of the same components as the earth does (after looking into this I discovered some contrasting ideas about the materials both the earth and moon are made up of, one website called windows2universe stated. ‘The co-formation theory explains why the moon appears in the location it does but it does not explain the evidence that the Earth and Moon do not appear to be made of the same material.’ but the majority stated the opposite these websites included BBC.com, Space.com and NASA.gov ) this theory does not explain why the earth is so much more dense. this infact would most likely not be the case if the moon was formed under the co-formation

this is often the cause of a moon when its mass is not formed with the mother planet or ejected from the planet. this is stated on windows2universe.org. most moons surrounding other planets are thought to be formed by the capture theory like the ones surrounding mars and neptune. because the moon has not been form like its mother planet they often do not take a spherical shape, examples of this are mars’s moons Phobos and Deimos both shaped a little like potatoes. The reason for this is because it has not gone through the same stages as the mother planet has gone through or made up from similar materials. because of our moon's spherical shape we can conclude that the the capture theory is probably the most unreliable theory of the three as from the evidence provided, that a captured moon would not be of a spherical shape and made up of different materials to the mother planet which our moon does not, according to