There are astrobiologists that think The Moon did save us from, obviously not all, but enough extinction level impacts to allow the time frames needed for higher level creatures to evolve. In other words, the large impactors from the outer solar system that Jupiter didn’t mop up were deflected away by the Moon like a knight with a shield. I would say that if we were to look for complex life on another planet that most likely it will always be accompanied by a proportionally large moon.
And to think, we only have about 4 billion years before The Moon will have drifted far enough away that it will no longer be able to stabilize The Earth’s precession and provide sufficient tidal action. That beats out The Sun going red giant by about a billion years.
It’s possible that Neptune’s moon, Miranda, provides a hint. It appears to have been formed at one point and then smashed by something large enough to break it apart and then it reformed again into a jumbled mess.
A lot of simulations that show how The Moon could have been formed show that there were actually 2 moons for a short period of time after a Mars sized planetoid struck The Earth. Those 2 moons eventually merged into one within a relatively short period of time after they first coalesced from all the material ejected into orbit after the impact. In fact the angle at which the Mars sized object hit The Earth has to be just right or you actually get simulations that show we would still have 2 moons above us in orbit to this very day or no moon at all. But what we ended up with is that perfect angle of impact that eventually led to all that material ejected into orbit combining into our one moon. I would say that something during that period of formation, whether a merger from a 2nd moon or a multiple large impacts lead to The Moons slightly uneven surface.
Because meteors originate from beyond lunar orbit, and the far side of the moon is easier for them to hit?
I’m not an astrophysicist and don’t play one on TV, but I do know something about billiards…
There are astrobiologists that think The Moon did save us from, obviously not all, but enough extinction level impacts to allow the time frames needed for higher level creatures to evolve. In other words, the large impactors from the outer solar system that Jupiter didn’t mop up were deflected away by the Moon like a knight with a shield. I would say that if we were to look for complex life on another planet that most likely it will always be accompanied by a proportionally large moon.
And to think, we
onlyhave about 4 billion years before The Moon will have drifted far enough away that it will no longer be able to stabilize The Earth’s precession and provide sufficient tidal action. That beats out The Sun going red giant by about a billion years.So the real question is: why the bulge?
It’s possible that Neptune’s moon, Miranda, provides a hint. It appears to have been formed at one point and then smashed by something large enough to break it apart and then it reformed again into a jumbled mess.
A lot of simulations that show how The Moon could have been formed show that there were actually 2 moons for a short period of time after a Mars sized planetoid struck The Earth. Those 2 moons eventually merged into one within a relatively short period of time after they first coalesced from all the material ejected into orbit after the impact. In fact the angle at which the Mars sized object hit The Earth has to be just right or you actually get simulations that show we would still have 2 moons above us in orbit to this very day or no moon at all. But what we ended up with is that perfect angle of impact that eventually led to all that material ejected into orbit combining into our one moon. I would say that something during that period of formation, whether a merger from a 2nd moon or a multiple large impacts lead to The Moons slightly uneven surface.
Yes, I like The Moon
That would be Uranus’ moon, Miranda.
Or that one too