We owe a lot to the moon.
It helps regulate our seasons, controls our ocean tides, and gives us 24-hour days. Without the moon, our days would last about six to eight hours.
And, of course, what's more beautiful than moonlight on a cloudless night?
But where did the moon come from? For the answer to that age-old question, check out the video above and/or read the transcript below.
JACQUELINE HOWARD: Hey everyone. Jacqueline Howard here. Have you ever wondered where the Earth got its moon? People have been trying to figure that out for thousands of years, and they’ve come up with some pretty wild theories.
In ancient Rome, people believed the moon was goddess Luna riding her silver chariot across the sky each night. African folklore has it that the moon was barfed up by the god Bumba. Inuit legend claims the moon god and the sun goddess got into a fight, and the moon is simply chasing the sun across the sky.
Scientists have their own theories, of course. One is that the moon was originally a satellite of Venus -- until Earth’s gravity stole it away. Another is that the moon formed alongside Earth from gas and dust in the early solar system. But the most popular theory of all is the giant impact theory. It holds that our moon was born out of a huge collision between our once-moonless planet and another planet that came our way.
Let’s take a trip back in time.
It was 4.5 billion years ago. Our infant Earth was covered in molten rock, and its atmosphere was filled with choking fumes. Then that other planet--a rocky ball about the size of Mars -- ricocheted through the inner solar system and smashed into Earth.
The catastrophic crash sent heaps of rocky debris flying off into space. The debris existed as a giant disk around Earth. But then, slowly but surely, the bits of debris in the disk came together under the force of their mutual gravity, coalescing into the sphere that we now call the moon.
Sounds pretty far-fetched, huh? But new evidence suggests that this really happened. German researchers looked at moon rocks that Apollo astronauts brought back to Earth in the 1960s and ‘70s. After taking a close look at oxygen atoms in the rocks, they found that the moon rocks have a slightly different makeup than the Earth rocks -- this supports the idea that the moon was made from Earth and, something else.
Now you know. Talk nerdy to me.
See all Talk Nerdy to Me posts.
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