Naked Science - Moon Mysteries

imagine our world ravaged by hurricane-force winds with temperatures swinging from scorching heat to freezing cold imagine the day lasting just six hours on a world where only primitive life forms evolve this could be our planet if the earth had no moon the moon an 81 million billion ton lump of rock and dust more than 2100 miles in diameter orbiting almost a quarter of a million miles above our heads it is the second brightest object in our skies with temperatures ranging from 250 degrees down to minus three hundred and eighty degrees and lower it's gravity is 1/6 of that of Earth Mountain Swords a 16,000 feet and millions of craters litter the dust dry surface where no liquid water has ever been found this is not a hospitable place and yet we associate the moon with romance and mystery the man in the moon in raptures lovers all over the world and feeds our hunger for Supernatural myths and legends we are far from alone in having a moon there are at least 135 other moons orbiting the planets in our solar system saturn has the most with 46 while we have at least 10 mysterious bodies orbiting our planet five are asteroids caught temporarily by the Earth's gravitational field and four are probably remnants of the Apollo 12 rocket the tenth and largest is our moon since long before the birth of humankind the moon has been the Earth's constant companion but until relatively recently we've known little of its true nature or even how it was created there are several competing theories one suggests that the moon is merely an asteroid or planet trapped by the Earth's gravity another ascribes the creation to a giant impact on earth ejecting masses of material that formed the moon clues as to which theory is more likely to be correct came when men first landed on the moon and started unlocking the secrets of creation buried within the lunar rocks one-zero typical mo f1o v ran by Amanda between 1969 and 1972 six missions blasted off to the moon only twelve humans have ever walked on the moon but these astronauts did more than just rewrite history they also returned with samples of lunar rock these moon rocks are amazingly similar to earth rocks but they contain far less iron this seemingly small difference offers a huge clue as to how the moon was created it shows that the moon started with a bang let's step back four and a half billion years in Earth's history the moon does not yet exist the inner solar system has about twice as many planets as the four that exists today many of them are on a crash course to destruction among them is a planet about half the size of Earth since named Theia who in greek mythology was the goddess mother of the moon the two bodies are on a collision course inexorably via Russia's closer and closer to Earth you the approaching planet is a terrifying sight astrophysicist Jeff Taylor studies the moon's fiery birth he describes the view from Earth as Thea races toward it it might have started looking like a star or a pretty big star but then as they got closer and closer this thing would get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until it just filled the sky moments before the big impact and then everything would be would be gone for you as a witness and there would be a giant flash because everything would be white-hot and if you were standing a friend of yours on the other side of the earth they would see the flash in the atmosphere and and feel gigantic earthquakes passing through the earth Thea is four thousand miles in diameter to put its size in perspective the meteorite thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs was about six miles across veeeh is traveling at 25,000 miles per hour that's about 20 times faster than a supersonic jet this is an object that is the size of Mars which is about half of the Earth's diameter so it's a gigantic event of unimaginable power as the planets get closer their immense gravitational fields rip each other's outer layers to pieces then they catastrophic lis collide the impact is equivalent to billions of Megaton bomb the impact shears off continent-sized sections of the Earth's crust blasting surface rocks out into space these surface rocks contain only a small amount of iron the atmosphere around the molten planet is filled with rock vapor Earth's gravity pulls back most of the debris but some is catapulted into space although it cannot escape completely instead it is trapped by the Earth's gravity forming a ring of red-hot dust and rock around the planet in a process called accretion the circling dust and rocks collide and fuse with other fragments to create larger blocks we can represent this process by olive oil in water the water here represents the space around the earth and the olive oil is the debris thrown around the earth by this giant impact and each little droplet that we pour in here represents a given chunk of matter thrown up blasted off the earth we're going to stir this around indicating the way the debris is being moved around the earth but when Taylor stop stirring the drops bump into each other and clump together as bigger droplets and that process of small things bumping into each other becoming larger is called accretion and that's how the moon formed around the earth without the earth formed around the Sun as the debris clumps together it's combined gravity becomes strong enough to attract even more debris this chain reaction doesn't stop until the billions of fragments of vaporized Rock have gathered into one red hot ball of matter in less than 100 years this cools into a solid lump of rock one-fiftieth the volume of earth it becomes the moon when the moon forms it is just 17,000 miles away but it doesn't stay as close as that it's violent birth sets it's spinning away from us on a journey that will last for 10 billion years absolute proof that the moon is moving away comes in 1969 when astronauts leave an 18 inch reflective plate on the moon's surface by bouncing lasers off this plate scientists can pinpoint the moon's distance from Earth to within an inch such calculations reveal that the moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches per year so why is the moon on the move in the 1990s supercomputers gave scientists a more accurate picture of what happened 4.5 billion years ago computer models of the creation impact reveal that the collision of fiha and earth is a glancing blow it imparts a rotational force to the earth this rotation gives earth its days and nights but the huge power of the collision sets the earth spinning far faster than the moon which orbits around it in these early days Earth spins once every 6 hours four times faster than today whereas the moon takes 20 days to complete one orbit so the moon orbits more slowly than the Earth spins however the early moon is 15 times closer than today which makes the effect of its gravity so strong that as this graphic demonstrates it pulls up a bulge on the Earth's surface directly below it this bulge moves like a tide across the Earth's surface with its own gravity tugging on the moon because the Earth spins faster than its satellite the Bulge is always ahead of the moon so it constantly pulls the moon forward causing it to accelerate any object that travels in a circular motion will move outwards as it accelerates much like a hammer being thrown in the Olympics as the moon accelerates in its orbit it starts to spiral away from Earth it's a journey that will continue for billions of years at the time of its birth the moon orbits earth 15 times more closely than today but this close proximity puts the moon in great jeopardy it faces a bombardment by thousands of asteroids which will destroy 80% of its surface it is now four billion years ago a time the scientists call for Giga years ago or gy a the moon now orbits eighty-six thousand miles away still three times closer to the earth than it is today from our planet the moon Dwarfs everything in the sky during this early period of its life the moon has its most profound effects on earth the massive collision that creates the moon is so powerful that it knocks the earth off balance onto an axis of 23.5 degrees it's this tilt that gives us our spring summer fall and winter if we spawn on a vertical axis like the planet Mercury seasons would not exist everywhere would receive 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness the poles would be entombed in an eternal freezing Twilight while the equator would bake in endless heat but the moon does more than merely produce this tilt it also maintains it the strong gravitational pull of our young moon acts as a global gyroscope stabilizing the Earth's axis astrobiologist Lynn Rothschild explains the reason we have this obliquity that holds steady is because the moon helps to stabilize the obliquity of the earth if we had no moon we would end up with what the astronomers call a chaotic obliquity we have quite a big shift at a fairly low timescale without our global stabilizer our axis could vary between 0 and 90 degrees this would alter the distribution of sunlight across the surface of the planet devastating our finally balanced weather systems climate patterns would go berserk the tropics could find themselves frozen under ice and Antarctica transformed into a vast desert but luckily the moon saves us from such disasters and allows life to exist it turns out that it may have had a really profound influence on how life is originated and evolved on the earth in fact you might almost be able to argue that we wouldn't be here today filming this if the moon weren't up in the sky not all planets in our solar system are so lucky Mars has two moons but they are too small to stabilize its tilt as a result the red planet rolls much more than earth some scientists believe that this is one of the reasons that there is no life there now when you look at our moon today the first things you notice are the craters they tell astrophysicists such as David King about a distant and violent past you can look up from your own backyard and see impact craters on the lunar surface there are over 300 thousand craters half a mile to over 500 miles in diameter on the lunar surface most of these craters come from meteorites hitting the moon the largest crater you can see from our planet is the Imbrium basin it is 700 miles across moon craters come in various sizes but almost all were created at around the same time around four billion years ago a chance alignment of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn changes the shape of their orbits this creates a slingshot effect hurling asteroids toward the inner solar system straight at earth and the young moon for millions of years asteroids bombard the entire inner solar system some of these impact events would have produced impact craters the size of continents or larger these type of impact events have the capacity to obliterate any oceans on the surface of the planet and superheat the atmospheres life as we know it could not persist on the surface of the earth this period of intense bombardment is called the lunar Cataclysm the Earth's gravity makes it worse pulling meteorites and asteroids directly toward itself on its own the tiny moon might have escaped with less damage but it's too close to earth asteroids heading for impact with earth hit the moon instead the moon becomes the first victim of collateral damage most of the craters on the moon formed during the lunar cataclysm 80% of the lunar surface is destroyed molten basalt losses from fissures and fills impact craters creating seas of lava over millions of years these will cool solidify and turn into Marya or seas such as the Sea of Tranquility it is the pattern of dark basalt rock that creates the face of the man in the moon as we know it today david kring demonstrates exactly what happens to the surface of the Moon when a meteorite strikes he releases a five pound rock from 50 feet above a sand pit on impact sand is fired upwards into the air during the lunar cataclysm some impacts are so big that material fired upwards never returns to the moon's surface instead it is propelled into space word is trapped by the gravity of the earth still only 86 thousand miles away some of these rocks hurtled toward our planet you actually would have seen a huge plume of debris rise up off the lunar surface this cloud in fact would have envelope the entire lunar surface and out of that cloud there would have been fragments of rock that pelted the earth they would have streamed through the atmosphere as intense fireballs to land rocky components on the Earth's surface these lunar meteorites are incredibly rare this is part of one of only 30 lunar meteorites ever found so this is a sample at fell and Africa analyses the samples like this tell us that there was a cataclysmic spike in the number of impact events that affected the moon 3.9 to 4 billion years ago lunar meteorites contain a record of the geological history of the inner solar system as it was around 4 billion years ago these rocks are older than the oldest rocks on earth the existence of lunar meteorites on earth started scientists wondering if rocks can be catapulted from the moon to earth could rocks from the earth also reach the moon and if such earth meteorites could be found might they hold fascinating clues to what was happening on earth billions of years ago to blast anything free from earth strong gravity requires immense force far more power than it takes to launch a lunar meteorite off the surface of the Moon for example the Space Shuttle uses 15 million horsepower to escape from Earth's gravity the lunar module needed just six thousand three hundred horsepower to lift off from the moon but just how big an impact would it take to blast debris off of the earth award-winning astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez from Iowa State University has figured out the answer to that question the crater in northern Arizona meteor crater even that which is really big when you when you go right up to it is wasn't large enough to catapult any significant amount of material beyond Earth's atmosphere but when you're talking about say the crater the kill the dinosaurs in Mexico now that one was probably big enough to start launching some some a small amount of material beyond the earth and have some of it land on the moon impacts on Earth during the lunar cataclysm are far bigger than the dinosaur extinction event they impact with such power that they punch holes in the Earth's atmosphere rocks and debris thrown skywards escape through these holes once in space some of the debris is vacuumed up by the moon orbiting just 86 thousand miles away and it eventually makes its way to the moon where it lands and then when it lands on the moon of course it could be further broken up into smaller pieces depending on how fast it is a service landing on the lunar surface they remain perfectly preserved in the vacuum of space the early Earth unfortunately erased its early history but it left a record of it at least a partial record of itself on the moon and if we can find some fossils or at least remnants of early life and these earth rocks on the moon that can help us answer these difficult questions about the origin of life Gonzales believes that more than 1,000 pounds of Earth rock could be spread over every square mile of the moon's surface it's the only place in the solar system that we can go to to learn about the origin of life because once the Earth rocks get to the moon they're preserved there in a pristine form there's no water cycle on the moon there's no more active geology and they get buried relatively quickly from the material book from other impacts on the moon and so they're preserved from the solar wind and other things as well so far no earth rocks have been found on the moon Gonzales will have to wait until the next moon mission in the hope that these priceless rocks may then be discovered the first half billion years of the moon's journey from Earth has been a violent one over the next billion years the moon continues its escape from Earth and out into space its passage changes the face of our planet beyond all recognition the power of its gravity creates tides thousands of feet high stirring up the oceans of the earth this creates the conditions for complex chemical compounds to form the moon is aiding the creation of life on Earth three billion years ago the moon is still escaping from the earth and it now orbits almost 200 thousand miles away the effect of its gravity is weaker but it still has the power to radically change our planet for now the earth has water and oceans and the moon is stirring things up it's too far away to have a dramatic effect on the rocks of the earth but the moon is affecting the oceans as the moon passes overhead its gravity creates tides in the water but these are not like the tides of today these are thousands of feet high astronomer Neil Cummins studies how the early moon affected the tides when the moon first formed that the tides were something like thousand times higher than they are today they would have gone inland as a as a wall of water the 10,000 feet high as high as a huge mountain they probably would have covered hundreds of miles and then they would come back scouring the land taking debris from the surface of the earth into the oceans the material sucked into the Seas contains minerals and nutrients the tides created by the moon churn these into the most crucial cocktail in the history of Earth the primordial soup different combinations of minerals are bound together and torn apart it's in this violent melting pot that the right combination of minerals is forged into life Cummins believes that the spark of life might never have occurred without the moon's power to churn up the primordial soup the moon created those tremendously high tides back when it first formed that allow the oceans to fill with minerals that allowed life to evolve that allowed us to be here the tides may have even helped the first DNA to evolve some scientists believe that the changes in chemical concentrations when the tides go in and out cause the DNA to split and replicate the enormous moon induced tides have a further vital role to play in the history of the earth they help the whole atmosphere of the planet to calm down and become a more hospitable place in which more complex life can evolve in our look back to three billion years ago the earth is a very different place the impact that creates the moon sets the earth spinning faster it spins so much faster than it does now that a day lasts just six hours this high-speed spin has devastating effects right around the earth the rotation of our planet is one of the most influential factors determining global climate the spin of the planet creates winds and boertie seas in the atmosphere the faster the spin the faster and more violent the winds billions of years ago when our planet rotated four times faster the atmosphere whips over the land when a hurricane occurs today 100 mile an hour winds trees are blown over houses lose their rooms tremendous amount of flooding but in a day or two it's gone things settled back to normal people get on with their lives imagine if we lived on a world in which those kinds of winds were continuous this is the climate of our fast-spinning early Earth a place with constant hurricane-force winds and giant 10,000 foot tides this is far too hostile a climate for life to evolve into more complex forms but the devastating tides that the Moon is creating begin to pacify the hellish climate the tides affect the speed of rotation of our planet eventually lengthening a day from 6 to 24 hours I want to show you how the moon has slowed the Earth's rotation from 6 hours to 24 hours I'm going to do that with this globe here representing the earth of course and this lens representing the moon Ruth is going to be the moon ok so here's the earth going around much faster than the moon orbiting the Earth today of course the earth goes run once every 24 hours and the moon goes around us about once every 28 days or so now the moon creates the tide the high tides are one of the high tides is almost directly underneath the moon so for example there would be a high tide right here created by the moon the moon lags slightly behind these tides because it orbits more slowly than the Earth spins the moon's gravity pulls back on these tidal bulges creating drag that slows the spin of the earth and as the water hits the continents and islands and other nasty things in the way the friction between them slows the earth down from the 6 hour day to a 24 hour day as the Earth's rotation slows the atmosphere ceases to whip around the globe hurricane-strength winds are no longer the norm and more complex life forms evolve in the relative peace and calm of our planet I really think that we owe the moon our existence today without it the world would have evolved differently and as a result we would have evolved differently we would not be the creatures we are the power of the nearby moon has dramatically reshaped our planet over the next 3 billion years the moon continues its journey out into space the moon's influence has waned but hasn't disappeared some scientists believe it causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions while many laymen still believe that the full moon affects our human behavior in bizarre and inexplicable ways today the moon orbits earth one quarter of a million miles away it's 15 times further from Earth than when it first formed it appears as a distant and mystical object in the sky and its gravitational pull is far weaker than it used to be the moon's gravity is now so small that it exerts the same upwards pull as a pea held about 20 inches above your head but some people still believe that even this weak power from the moon affects human behavior the moon's 29-day orbit around the earth is called the lunar cycle during the lunar cycle the appearance of the moon changes because it is constantly moving relative to the Sun and Earth volcanologist Steve O'Mara thinks this changing Sun Moon alignment is critical I'm going to demonstrate to you how the moon goes through its lunar cycle the volleyball is the moon I am the earth now the first thing you should know is that the moon goes around the earth in about a month now we're going to start off at this position here which is where the moon is directly between the Earth and the Sun this is New Moon when I look at the moon I see totally in shadow now as the moon moves in its orbit you can start to see that part of his disk becomes slightly illuminated and it forms a crescent this is the crescent phase as the Moon moves further you see it in a half phase when it's totally opposite the Sun in our sky here we have full moon out all of the Moon is visible fully illuminated now as the moon continues in its orbit we see the shadow returning and the phase is diminishing this is the waning moon now we have a waning crescent and finally we return about a month later back to new moon and the cycle starts all over again the full moon has long been associated with mystery aggression and horror studies show that the behavior of some animals changes during the lunar cycle some creatures whole breeding cycle is dictated by the moon scientists have investigated the link between predation and the full moon researchers think that the increased moon light helps some nocturnal hunters track and kill their prey although the idea that wolves howl more often on a full moon is nothing more than a myth yet if some mammals do become more active at full moon might this aggressive lunar trait extend to humans the streets of San Francisco officers Healy and Mahoney of the San Francisco Police Department gear up for another night patrolling the town they have been policing the tough Tenderloin district for the past 10 years this is no ordinary night it's a full moon and on a full moon things definitely feel a bit hotter I think some of the clientele we deal with they think it's a full moon everyday I think but if there's a noticeable difference you could pretty much ask anybody who works in you know service jobs like police fire paramedics hospital workers they'll all tell you that during during the times of the full moon business just goes up but is there any scientific evidence of human behavior being affected by the moon in 1976 the American Journal of Psychology studied 30 4318 crimes and found they occurred more frequently at full moon a year later researchers studying eighteen thousand four hundred and ninety five psychiatric patients found that hospital admissions peak during a new moon however a series of more recent studies reveals no link between human behavior and the lunar cycle and yet many people still believe in the power of the full moon possibly because of horror movies and folklore for generations we have been led to believe that murder death and even mythical creatures such as werewolves are linked to the full moon it's not surprising that over time we start to believe the link is true and the myth of the full moon is kept alive the effects of the Moon on humans may be minimal but some scientists believe that its gravity still exerts a major influence on the planet itself it's not only the moon's appearance that alters with the lunar cycle its gravitational pull varies as well at new moon when the Sun and Moon are aligned their combined gravity tugs even more than usual on the earth as the moon makes its way around the earth it pulls us in different directions when there is a full moon the Sun and Moon pull in opposite directions in a kind of astronomical tug-of-war for most of the lunar cycle there is no danger for Earth but when the Sun and Moon are aligned their combined gravity creates the maximum stress on the Earth's crust some scientist suggests that this can trigger devastating natural phenomena volcanologist Steve and Donna O'Meara use this cycle to help them predict eruptions while other scientists check sulfur levels and study seismographic data to predict eruptions Steve and Donna plot the position of the moon which they believe has the power to trigger eruptions at certain points in its orbit the O'Meara's believe that in the complicated cycle of tugs and pulls from the Sun and Moon increased stress can distort molten rock under the earth at the crusts most unstable points or volcanoes form the pressure sometimes becomes too much and triggers an eruption the O'Meara's Eureka moment comes in 1996 on an expedition to an erupting volcano called arenal in Costa Rica well the coolest thing is that all volcanoes are different they're just like people they have different personalities I mean obviously there's different types of scientific volcanoes this is a shield volcano which has very fluid eruptions straddle volcanoes have huge eruptions in volcanoes we've we've actually gotten to know some and like arenal volcano we call the brat because it's just always baby during their two-week expedition R&L lives up to its nickname erupting 15 times they realize that the biggest eruptions occur whenever the moon is directly overhead by tracking the moon's position over our UNAM the O'Meara's predict eruptions with an accuracy of 80% a pinpoint accuracy unparalleled in the world of Volcanology in one of them we in fact woke the villagers and tell them that get prepared there's going to be an eruption that you know 12:30 and bang 12:30 the thing erupted right on schedule since 1996 the O'Meara's claimed to have used the moon to correctly predict eruptions all around the world either I have to be the luckiest person on earth or the moon is effecting volcanic eruptions but the moon may trigger natural disasters on an even bigger scale than volcanoes one scientist now believes the moon may have caused two of the worst natural disasters of recent years the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan and the 2004 Asian tsunami today the moon is still on its journey edging away from Earth at 1.5 inches per year even from a quarter of a million miles out in space its gravitational pull can still affect our planet it is suggested that the moon can trigger volcanoes but geologists James berkland argues that it has a far more destructive role he believes that the moon triggers earthquakes quakes that kill many thousands of people 1994 and berkland travels to Peru to witness that rare moment when the Sun and Moon perfectly line up creating a solar eclipse in Peru a large earthquake is called a teddy moco and we saw this great Eclipse and the Peruvian guide said I am so glad you were able to see our Eclipse we in Peru have a tradition we watch the Eclipse and then we wait for the earthquake this ancient Peruvian belief that solar eclipses are involved with triggering terremoto or earthquakes supports something berkland has been investigating for the past three decades they don't have known what i've known for 50 years almost that the lining up the Sun Moon and Earth often can trigger quakes the Earth's crust is made up of seven tectonic plates that bump and grind against each other creating a series of fault lines at these points the opposing plates scrape against each other sometimes slipping or pushing upwards this sudden movement causes earthquakes berkland thinks that the relative position of the Moon and Sun above these fault lines is critical in the triggering of earthquakes when I saw the ocean tides due to the passage of the moon then it occurred to me that perhaps it might loosen up the fault lines and sort of lubricate the faults and make them easier to slip he monitors the location of the Sun and the moon during the lunar cycle as they pass over these danger zones he also factors in how close the moon is to earth since the moon's orbit isn't a perfect circle it's elliptical the nearest point of the moon's orbit is called perigee and it's farthest is called Apogee at perigee the moon's pull on the earth is 20% stronger than an Apogee now the earth is here and the moon travels around the earth in a very elliptical orbit that's exaggerated here but when it's at is near Point a we call a perigee it's only about two hundred twenty-one thousand miles away from the earth when the moon is close its effect on our tides is far greater than it is over here at the far point at Apogee two hundred and fifty three thousand miles away just two weeks later by combining all this information berkland calculates how much pressure the moon is putting on certain fault lines around the world as it passes overhead he suggests that a new moon at perigee can actually cause unstable fault lines to slip his technique has allowed him to predict several earthquakes in the past decade but his theories are controversial in 1989 berkland was suspended from his job as County geologist for Santa Clara California until he promised to stop making predictions that caused mass panic other scientists doubt that there is a link between the moon and earthquakes but berkland claims that some of his predictions have proved to be correct October 1989 berkland warns the city of San Francisco that a big quake is about to strike a few days after his alert during the World Series Oakland's tragic prediction comes true when the World Series quake hit I was on the seventh floor of the County Building when boom the P wave hit and for two seconds I was elated I got my quick and then I didn't want any part of it because I was being rocked back and forth I held on to the counter it was frightening the 6.9 magnitude quake causes six billion dollars of damage and claims 63 lives it's the biggest earthquake to hit San Francisco in 80 years with information predicting a six and a half to seven for the Bay Area when we hadn't had such a quake since 1960 Wake is a pretty good call Birkins ideas are radical and the exact nature of the moon's influence on earthquakes is not well understood however in 2004 berkland predicts that a huge earthquake will occur around the time of the full moon just after Christmas the earthquake that triggers the Indian Ocean tsunami Dulli occurs on December 26th 2004 at a full moon in 2005 berkland predicts a 7.0 earthquake and within weeks of his prediction a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hits Pakistan just after a solar eclipse over the country could this be a demonstration of the moon influencing our planet even though that influence is waning today the Moon and Sun appear exactly the same size in the sky meaning that the moon covers the Sun during a solar eclipse but let's look into the distant future half a billion years from now and the moon is so far from Earth that eclipses are a thing of the past less than two billion years hence with the moon no longer holding the Earth on its axis the planet rocks back and forth the weather goes wild and life on Earth is threatened billions of years into the future the moon reaches the end of its journey away from the earth its orbit stabilizes in five billion years the Sun expands as it nears the end of its life the Earth and Moon so inextricably linked in life are together in death engulfed side-by-side by the awesome heat of our dying Sun

Channel: Naked Science

Views: 2,083,830

Rating: 4.3054614 out of 5

Keywords: moon, mysteries, naked, science, lunar, cataclysm, gravitational, creation, space, debris, influence, planet, life, earth, formation, impact, axis, rotate, solar, system, past, violent, meteorite, bombardment, history, primordial, mystery, predict, natural, disasters, strike, formed, gravity, reshaped, primitive, dark, side, imagine, orbit, craters, supernatural, myth, legend, theory, hypothesis, theia, collision, birth, catastrophic, accretion, process, distance, why, effect, tilt, nasa, astrophysics, astronomy, asteroid, geological, perigee, apogee

Id: 0tqgWuSIZUg

Length: 50min 8sec (3008 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 20 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/bibib0i]

Such a rare place in the universe, our planet, and yet we treat it like we don't care. Too many people on it.

[u/tarayqueen]

This is only theory, no one actually knows how the moon was formed.