Origin of moon

  Moon is a natural satellite of earth. It is also called Luna in Latin. It seems like a pearl in the night sky. Its such a beautiful natu...

 Moon is a natural satellite of earth. It is also called Luna in Latin. It seems like a pearl in the night sky. Its such a beautiful natural formation that many songs has been dedicated to moon.

It is also being worshipped as a god in many mythologies. But many people don't know that moon is not unique in our solar system , its just a natural satellite revolving around earth due to gravity. And there are more than 200 such natural satellites in our solar system revolving around their parent planet.

Formation:

There are many proposed theories about the formation of our moon. Some of them are:

1.The fission theory:

 It was proposed by George Howard Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin. According to this theory, moon is a part of earth which was separated by it because of the rapid spin of earth during its early development stage. And according to this theory the separated moon left a hole like structure on earth which is now pacific ocean.

2.The capture theory: 

According to this theory, the moon is a lost astronomical body which was passing by earth and was attracted and locked in the its orbit due to the gravitational force. And since then it is revolving around earth like that.

3.The giant impact theory: 

It is the most widely accepted theory and was proposed by William kenneth hartmann. According to this, there was an ancient planet in the early solar system called Theia (Theia was the mother of goddess moon according to greek mythology) which shared its orbit in solar system along with earth and other planets. It was approximately about the size of mars. Eventually its orbit became unstable, and it collided with earth with a slant angle about 4.5 billion years ago. As a result core of earth and theia combined and some part of their mantle went in space which eventually formed moon due to gravity and thats how it was created. The crash also increased the rotating speed of earth.

Recent studies have found that the core of earth is larger than its expected size whereas the core of moon is very small. That's because earth is the mixture core of two planets whereas moon is the mixture of their mantles. The soil sample of moon was also like earth just a little dry. All this facts supported this theory. Some also say that the water on earth also came from theia , and only after that life began on earth.

Facts:

Moon is the 5th largest satellite in our solar system.

It was formed 4.5 billion years ago.

It is one quarter(27%) the diameter of the Earth , while its mass is only 1.2% that of Earth and acceleration due to gravity is 1/6 times than that of Earth.

Its diameter is 2,159 miles (3,476 kilometers) which is almost the size of china.

Its distance from earth is about 238,455 miles (384,400 kilometers) which can fit almost 30 earths in between.

Its core is rich in iron while its mantle and crust is rich in  magnesium, oxygen and silicon.

Water is also present on lunar soil at the poles which came from comets where sunlight is not reachable.

It causes tidal waves on earth due to its gravitation pull.

Its surface is marked by numerous craters because it does not has any atmosphere to resist the crash. The largest crater is located at south pole Aitken basin which covers almost a quarter of the surface and is deep enough to fit Mt. Everest inside.

Its rate of rotation and rate of revolution is same due to which it is tidally locked with earth and while on earth we can only see one side of the moon. The other side of the moon was only revealed when we sent satellites there.

Man walked on the moon for the first time in the history when Apollo 11 landed on moon in 1969 with Neil Armstrong , Buzz aldren and Micheal collins.

We have seen moon since the birth of life on earth and humans have always worshipped moon and used its movement to make lunar calendars and all. We are just so much used to of seeing moon that we never think how it was created and how complex are its effect on earth and living beings.