Multiple Moons?

Posted by Michael Pinto on May 7, 2008 in Science |

Did Earth once have multiple moons?

I wonder if somewhere out there we have an orphan moon wandering the cosmos?

Did Earth once have multiple moons?

“The ancient catastrophe that gave birth to the Moon may have produced additional satellites that lingered in Earth’s skies for tens of millions of years. A new model suggests moonlets may have once occupied the two Earth-Moon Lagrangian points, regions in space where the gravitational tug of the Earth and the Moon exactly cancel each other out. Objects trapped in these points are called Trojans and can remain stationary forever if left undisturbed.

Scientists think the Moon was created when Earth was struck by a Mars-sized object some 4.5 billion years ago. “The giant impact that likely led to the formation of the Moon launched a lot of material into Earth orbit, and some could well have been caught in the Lagrangian points,” says study team member Jack Lissauer of NASA Ames Research Center in California, US.”





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