Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Is the Moon the Earths own sibling?!

Is the Moon  the Earths own sibling?!

No other planet in the solar system possesses such a large satellite like moon. The first person to develop a theory about the moon was the scientist George Darwin son of the most famous Charles Darwin. He hold the view that the moon and the earth had once been very closer together than now.  He thought that they had been hold together as a single planet revolving at a high speed around its own axis with a time taking less than two hours per rotation.

By that time the earth was molten and with high temperature.  As the speed of rotation was high the earth bulged at the equator.  The centrifugal force gradually caused a drop of terrestrial matter to detach itself and fly out into the space.  This piece of the earth becomes moon, which continues to revolve around the earth as the satellite.

 As a proof for his theory, Darwin shows the Pacific ocean which is shaped like a bowl. What he says  is Pacific ocean is a scar left behind when the moon detached away. For most of the years the Astronomers  though that Darwin's theory was more or less correct, but however later realise that the separation of moon from the earth could not have taken place in the way he described.


Then another theory was framed.  The moon also was a small independent planet in the solar system when the solar system was formed however on one of its orbits it came a bit closer to the earth and it was influenced by the earth's gravitational pull and forced to follow the earth's orbit.


In 1960, a new hypothesis  Accreation theory was  framed according to this, when the solar system was young numerous planetary embryos, disintegrated near the earth.  The pull of the earth caused the embryo to form a ring around the earth.  Since the particles attracted one another and they began to cluster together finally forming the moon.


None of these theories was satisfactory  to the scientists. The chemical composition of the moons surface differ from the earths crust. On the moons surface there is no alkali metal such as sodium, potassium etc but heat resistant oxides of aluminium and calcium are abundant which proved Darwin theory was wrong and the rock analysis further revealed that moon contains only 10 percent of Iron compared to th30percent of Iron content  of the earth.  Hence this proved  capture theory and growth  theory are wrong.


The origin of moon still present mystery we know that our planet and moon are of the same age. Further we know that our own satellite functions as a climatic regulator for our earth.

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