Evidence of Protoplanet Found On Moon 105
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes 'Researchers have found evidence of the world that crashed into the Earth billions of years ago to form the Moon. Analysis of lunar rock brought back by Apollo astronauts shows traces of the "planet" called Theia. The researchers claim that their discovery confirms the theory that the Moon was created by just such a cataclysmic collision. The accepted theory since the 1980s is that the Moon arose as a result of a collision between the Earth and Theia 4.5bn years ago. It is the simplest explanation, and fits in well with computer simulations. The main drawback with the theory is that no one had found any evidence of Theia in lunar rock samples. Earlier analyses had shown Moon rock to have originated entirely from the Earth whereas computer simulations had shown that the Moon ought to have been mostly derived from Theia. Now a more refined analysis of Moon rock has found evidence of material thought to have an alien origin.'
Somewhat confused (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't read the Science article yet, but from the BBC report it seems that the differences between the isotope ratios in moon rocks and earth are still a lot smaller than expected. This would suggest the Theia hypotheses to not be true, contrary to what the title says. I'm going to track down the original paper, because this BBC article has me somewhat confused.
Re:I'm ignorant (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm ignorant, but today's science seems like "Tell me what is your theory, and i will find data to prove it's true"...
Yes, like that famous current scientist Einstein produced a theory of gravitation and then several years later they found data to prove it was true.
Or as a law predicts, "Given an enough amount of data, ANY theory can be proved"... :-)
There is no law that predicts such a thing. Given enough data, almost all theories are disproven. The only ones that remain are the ones that fit the data.
Re:I'm ignorant (Score:5, Insightful)
Given enough data, almost all theories are disproven. The only ones that remain are the ones that fit the data.
Given enough data, almost all hypotheses are disproven. The ones which remain and have not yet been disproven by evidence become theories.