Earth is the only planet in the solar system that has only one satellite, so you can imagine how much it affects us. According to many theories, life could not have developed without the Moon.
The origin of the Moon occurred after a devastating impact between the still-glowing primordial Earth and a small planet the size of Mars, called Theia, about 4.5 billion years ago. The satellite had formed from the debris that had formed.
There is now new evidence to support this theory; The isotopes of the noble gases helium and neon trapped in lunar meteorites recovered from Antarctica match those found in the solar wind.
“Finding solar gases for the first time in lunar basaltic materials that are unrelated to any exposure on the lunar surface was a very exciting result,” said Patricia Weil of Washington University in St. Louis.
The subjects of the study by Weil and colleagues are just 6 fragments recovered from Antarctica. These fragments are all part of the same original meteorite and are made of a very specific type of rock: unfractured. Similarities between the elements on the Moon and the materials found deep in the Earth suggest that they may have been around for a long time.
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