Interesting new research about the Earth's collision with protoplanet Theia (maybe better known as the Giant Impact Hypotheses). A summary of the article:
Interesting new research about the Earth's collision with protoplanet Theia (maybe better known as the Giant Impact Hypotheses).
A summary of the article:
Earth’s early history is marked by massive collisions with other objects, including planetesimals. One of the defining events in our planet’s history, the formation of the Moon, likely resulted from one of these catastrophic collisions when a Mars-sized protoplanet crashed into Earth. That’s the Giant Impact Hypothesis, and it explains how the collision produced a torus of debris rotating around the Earth that eventually coalesced into our only natural satellite.
New research strengthens the idea that Theia left some of its remains inside Earth.
Back in the 1980s, scientists made a remarkable discovery. Two gigantic, continent-sized blobs were embedded deep in the Earth. One is under Africa, and one is under the Pacific Ocean. They’re called LLSVPs, or Large Low-Shear-Velocity Provinces, and they have unusually high iron levels. The iron concentration changes the speed of seismic waves that travel through them, leading to their discovery.
Now, new research points convincingly at the Giant Impact as the LLSVP’s source. The new paper is “Moon-forming impactor as a source of Earth’s basal mantle anomalies.” It’s in the journal Nature, and the lead author is Qian Yuan, a Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate at Caltech’s Seismological Laboratory.
Interesting new research about the Earth's collision with protoplanet Theia (maybe better known as the Giant Impact Hypotheses).
A summary of the article: