{"id":1924,"date":"2025-08-10T10:47:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T07:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/?p=1924"},"modified":"2025-11-20T12:37:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:37:53","slug":"jupiter-may-have-helped-form-earths-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/2025\/08\/10\/jupiter-may-have-helped-form-earths-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Jupiter May Have Helped Form Earth’s Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The so-called “great instability” event that wreaked havoc among the planets and sent the gas giants hurtling through space until they settled into their familiar orbits appears to have occurred between 60 and 100 million years after the birth of the solar system, according to a thorough scientific investigation that has linked the meteorite to an asteroid once ejected by these destructive planets.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Moreover, scientists believe that migrating planets, primarily Jupiter, may have led to the formation of the Moon by destabilizing the orbit of a Mars-sized protoplanet called Theia. This destabilization may have triggered a collision with Earth, which ejected debris into space. It is this debris, according to scientists, that may have caused the formation of the Moon, according to the results of a study published April 16, 2024, in the journal Science and presented at the General Assembly of the European Geological Union in Vienna.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nDid a migrating Jupiter scatter asteroids and cause the collision that formed Earth’s Moon? NASA<\/em><\/p>\n

By studying the composition and locations of different types of asteroids and comets, scientists have determined that the aforementioned catastrophe occurred early in the history of the solar system. However, there are still a number of mysteries to be solved when it comes to how exactly it all happened.<\/p>\n

For example, scientists know that the solar system objects we see today, including Earth, formed from a disk of gas and dust around the sun. However, some of these objects, namely asteroids and comets, appear to be made of material that wasn\u2019t in the disk \u2014 at least, that material shouldn\u2019t have been present in the locations where these objects are now. Instead, it makes more sense to assume that these objects formed closer to the sun and were then dispersed further out. If Jupiter and the other giant planets migrated from where they formed, perhaps asteroids and comets could have done the same.<\/p>\n

In the early solar system, the four gas giants\u2014Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune\u2014were located closer to one another. Over time, gravitational interactions with planetesimals beyond Neptune’s orbit caused Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune to move outward. At the same time, Jupiter moved inward, which scientists believe destabilized the bodies in the inner solar system.<\/p>\n

Scientists call the theory behind this orbital instability the \u201cNice Model,\u201d named after the French city that is home to the C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur Observatory where scientists first developed the idea. These scientists originally believed that this instability occurred between 500 and 800 million years after the birth of the solar system. If true, this would coincide with an event known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, in which the inner planets would have been peppered with comets dislodged from their orbits by migrating gas giants. However, evidence has disproved the Late Heavy Bombardment concept, and scientists now believe that the instability occurred no later than 100 million years after the formation of the solar system, based on when Jupiter would have accumulated its Trojan asteroids at its L4 and L5 Lagrange points.<\/p>\n

One side argues that the instability could have happened very quickly, within four million years of the formation of the solar system. The other side believes that it happened later, about 60 million years later.<\/p>\n

The team focused on a meteorite known as an EL enstatite chondrite, which is low in iron and very similar in composition and isotopic makeup to the material that formed the Earth. This tells scientists that Earth and EL chondrites likely condensed from the same part of the planet-forming disk.<\/p>\n

However, the parent body of the EL chondrite is apparently no longer near Earth. In fact, astronomical observations using ground-based telescopes have linked these meteorites to the Ator family of asteroids, which is located quite far in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. For reference, the Ator family and the EL chondrites were once part of a larger asteroid that was torn apart by a collision about 3 billion years ago, which is not related to the Great Instability.<\/p>\n

Something had to have thrown the Ator family progenitor into the asteroid belt, and that \u201csomething,\u201d the team says, had to be the instability that sent Jupiter into a wandering frenzy. The EL chondrites are thus ideal chronometers of this event, since they should contain a clear record of what must have happened.<\/p>\n\n

In particular, the thermal history of EL meteorites tells a rich story, constraining both the size of the original parent body and the time it took it to cool before breaking apart.<\/p>\n

Using dynamical modeling, the team was able to simulate various scenarios related to Jupiter’s migration, and concluded that Jupiter could have dispersed Ator’s progenitor into an asteroid as early as 60 million years after the birth of the solar system. Combined with data from Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, the scientists can now say that the Great Instability occurred between 60 and 100 million years ago.<\/p>\n

Avdellidou, in particular, concludes that the Nice model itself\u2014where the orbits of a giant planet change dramatically over a short period of 10 or 20 million years\u2014is the best and perhaps only time to send asteroids to the region of this particular Ator family of asteroids.<\/p>\n

And, interestingly, the collision between Earth and Theia that formed the Moon occurred around this time. Theia had a very similar composition, the result of a giant collision with the proto-Earth. Studying samples from the Moon allows us to estimate its age, while other scientists have shown that this collision may have been the result of instability on the giant planet.<\/p>\n

Although it’s impossible to prove. “Proof” is a strong statement, and a complicated one when it comes to events 4.5 billion years ago, but the collision that formed the Moon appears to coincide with the Great Instability Period.<\/p>\n

The study puts these events into a clear, precise time frame. While it may not be possible to definitively prove Jupiter’s involvement in the formation of the Moon, the evidence is certainly suggestive.<\/p>\n

So the next time you look at the Moon’s silvery face in our night sky, think of it as a legacy of the early solar system, when Jupiter was battering it from all sides.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The so-called “great instability” event that wreaked havoc among the planets and sent the gas giants hurtling through space until they settled into their familiar orbits appears to have occurred between 60 and 100 million years after the birth of the solar system, according to a thorough scientific investigation that has linked the meteorite to an asteroid once ejected by these destructive planets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[541,543,40],"tags":[678,324,293,894],"class_list":{"0":"post-1924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-moon","8":"category-solar-system","9":"category-kosmos","10":"tag-earth","11":"tag-jupiter","12":"tag-moon","13":"tag-theia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1926,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924\/revisions\/1926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}