A team multidisciplinary team of scientists has discovered dThe “anomalous” regions inside the Earth which they attribute to the remains of the collision that formed the Moon about 4.5 billion years ago. The analysis of this phenomenon raises the hypothesis that a protoplanet (a kind of “embryo” of planet known as Theia) collided with the “proto-Earth” (Gaia) about 4.5 billion years ago, which would have led to the formation of different regions in the earth’s mantle.
The finding, published this Wednesday in the journal Nature, is based on computer simulations carried out by a multidisciplinary team of scientists affiliated with research centers in the United States, China and the United Kingdom. According to the experts who have led this analysis, the Moon would have been formed from the remains of this gigantic collision, while the remains of Theia would have been buried in the depths of the Earth’s mantle; Although the researchers warn that There is still no direct evidence of the existence of Theia.
The researchers say that this finding will be key to understand the initial state of the Earth and even the formation of nearby planets.
Anomalous regions
Scientists came to this conclusion while searching for an explanation for the fact that two large regions of the Earth’s mantle present a unusually slow seismic velocity about 2,900 kilometers deep, and its material is between 2 and 3.5% denser than that of the surrounding Earth’s mantle.
These two anomalous regions regarding the heterogeneity of the rest of the Earth’s mantle They extend for thousands of kilometers at its base, one of them under the African tectonic plate and the other under the Pacific tectonic plate.
The authors suggest that dense materials can represent buried relics of Theia’s cloak material that were preserved in the depths of the proto-Earth after the giant impact that led to the formation of the Moon.
Moon Formation
The formation of the Moon had been an enigma for several generations of scientists. Currently, the dominant theory suggests that, during last stages of Earth’s growthAbout 4.5 billion years ago, a giant collision occurred between the early Earth (Gaia) and a Mars-sized protoplanet known as Theia.
Numerical simulations have indicated that the Moon would have been formed from debris from the collision and would have inherited material from Theia, mainly, while Gaia, due to its much greater mass, was only “slightly contaminated” by Theia material.
Related news
Since Gaia and Theia were relatively independent formations and composed of different materialsresearchers believed that the Moon – dominated by Teian material – and the Earth – dominated by Gaian material – should have different compositions.
However, high-precision isotopic measurements have revealed that the compositions of the Earth and the Moon are remarkably similar, putting into question questioned the conventional theory of the formation of the Moon.