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Professor Erik Asphaug from the University of California in Santa Cruz will be explaining a new theory at a conference about the moon, held in the Royal Society this September. He believes a smaller ‘twin' moon was once orbiting the Earth, but it survived only a few million years before it collided with the one we know today. Only one was left.
He said “The second moon would have lasted for only a few million years; then it would have collided with the moon to leave the one large body we see today.
“It would have orbited Earth at the same speed and distance and just got slowly sucked in until they hit and then coalesced.”
Professor Asphaug spoke to the Sunday Times in the UK to say that he believes the landscape of the Moon has been forged by this collision. The Moon appears to have mountains on the surface, and this was caused by the collision of the two moons. He says that the smaller moon was one thirtieth the size of the current moon.
Scientists from Harvard have put forward a theory that suggested the Moon was once part of the Earth that broke off , after they collided with another body.
A month ago astronomers said that they discovered three planets, similar to Earth which have been orbiting a single star, perhaps able to support life. While we have yet to find another intelligent life form in space, researchers have said that there could be as many as 100 billion planets similar to Earth in our galaxy alone.
Kitguru says: An interesting theory to join a handful currently being proposed.
