There's a theory that having a big moon is important to the development of life, because the much bigger tides create a bigger intertidal zone, but people used to think having a huge Moon like ours was a once-in-a-universe event. If huge impacts that could generate big moons are common, then, maybe . . . ."This was about the same time that a much bigger object slammed into the Earth, throwing material into orbit around our infant planet. This material is thought to have coalesced to form the Moon.... "It happened probably right at the end of the formation of the four terrestrial planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars," said Craig Agnor, a co-author on the Francis Nimmo study. ... "In terms of the process of the planets sweeping up the last bits of debris, this could have been one of the last big bits of debris."
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Mars had a Moon-making impact like Earth 0 Comments More Login /
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