It is confirmed by a huge lunar crater
He expressed an unusual hypothesis about the origin of the Moon at a meeting held at the Main Astronomical Institute. Sternberg's colloquium "The Earth at an early stage of the formation of the solar system" leading researcher at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Bagrov. In his opinion, the Moon is nothing more than a piece of the once destroyed planet Phaeton, which was captured by the gravity of the Earth.
Versions about the connection of Phaethon with the Moon sounded earlier, but for the first time the hypothesis was substantiated from a scientific point of view. We learned from the scientist himself about why Alexander Bagrov rejects the theory of the formation of the Moon as a result of a collision with another body (the hypothesis of the impact), which exists among scientists.
- The German scientist Olbers was the first to speak about the existence of the planet Phaethon 200 years ago, says Bagrov. - When three asteroids were discovered between Mars and Jupiter at once, he wondered if they were the remnants of a planet that once existed in this orbit?
For many years this hypothetical body was called that - the planet of Olbers, until in Soviet times the astronomer from the Pulkovo Observatory Sergei Orlov called it Phaethon, seeing in its fate a resemblance to the fate of the ancient Greek hero, the son of the sun god Helios. According to legend, traveling across the sky in a golden chariot, Phaethon lost his way among the heavenly constellations, and Zeus the Thunderer, in order to save the Earth, threw lightning into the chariot, destroying it. Phaethon fell to Earth and died. Also, by analogy with the ancient Greek Phaethon, the hypothetical planet between Mars and Jupiter also perished.
- Why don't you like the existing hypotheses about the formation of the moon?
- Astronomers are considering two hypotheses - either the formation of the Moon from the same material together with the Earth, or about an impact origin, due to which part of the earth's crust was thrown into space and the Moon was formed from it. Now this version is considered the main one, but, by and large, only among journalists. Scientists are skeptical about it, because according to the law of celestial mechanics, if some body from the outside would hit the Earth, it would certainly change our circular orbit to an elliptical one. And if the substance was thrown out of the Earth, it must have come back.
And what we are seeing: the Moon does not fall to the Earth, and our planet rotates along a smooth circular path.
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- But supporters of the impact version talk about a tangential impact, which ejected matter, but could not change the orbit …
- There could not be such a "collision" in which the orbit does not change. Very artificial constructions, impact simulations begin, but I think they are extremely complex and still do not answer many questions.
- How do you think the history of the moon developed?
- Most likely, the planet Phaethon was destroyed by a blow from distant space. If we take into account that inside it was as liquid as our planet (its crust is only 20-30 km, everything else is molten bowels), then as a result of the impact, all this liquid splashed throughout the entire solar system. Small particles of Phaethon eventually turned into asteroids, and one large piece, torn off as a result of an impact from the opposite side of the planet, went into the orbit of the Sun. This part of Phaeton, consisting mainly of crust with magma, would have flown around the star, but one of its many brothers was stopped by another blow and given under the influence of gravity.
- What evidence is there?
- On the Moon, on its reverse side, there is a large crater (1200 km with a Moon diameter of 3 thousand km), which is called a "depression" - a depression. Its depth is about 3 km.
- What happened to him next, did he crash into the Earth?
- Not. It was a viscous body (crust with magma), under the influence of its own gravity, took a spherical shape. Once in an elliptical orbit near the Earth, it began to experience the strongest effect of the tides from the Earth. The tides led to the most important results: the Moon acquired an almost circular orbit, its period of rotation became equal to the period of its revolution around the Earth (therefore, it looks at us all the time with one side), and the plane of the Moon's orbit almost coincided with the plane of the Earth's equator. them - only captured. The capture hypothesis explains the amazing fact that only the Earth has a large satellite, while other terrestrial planets do not.
- But before your hypothesis, I read the version that the Moon is the core of the dead Phaethon …
- The composition of the Moon, which mainly consists of basalts, silicates, like the crust of the Earth, says that this is not so, and if it were formed from the core of Phaeton, it would be iron.
- How did your colleagues react to your performance?
- Many were against my hypothesis. Most of our scientists are adherents of the school of dynamic cosmogony of Otto Schmidt, who 60-70 years ago proposed a hypothesis that the solar system developed from a protoplanetary cloud, where planets were collected from different fragments. And according to this idea, Jupiter simply did not allow the planet Phaethon to gather by its attraction, that is, it did not exist at all. This school is very strong, it is reckoned with all over the world.
- Where, in the opinion of representatives of the Schmidt school, did the Moon come from?
- Otto Yulievich's students put forward different versions. In particular, Evgenia Ruskol has been studying the Moon all her life and is still confident that the Moon was formed together with the Earth from the same cloud. The hypothesis assumes that the Earth and the Moon simply "grew" in the same orbit as a double planet. But it does not explain why one body is rich in iron and the other is not. Therefore, the theory of impact has recently been developed, but as I have already said, they also do not stand up to criticism. The planet, which received a blow from the outside, had to change its orbit, like Murcury, which received a similar blow at one time, which left the Coloris crater on the surface - its orbit became elliptical.
- When did the attraction of Phaeton-Moon take place?
- It is known that the age of the Moon, Earth and the Sun is approximately the same. The destruction of Phaeton and the formation of the Moon from its fragments near the Earth took place during the period of the origin of the solar system, about 4 billion years ago.
Commentary from a researcher at the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry Vernadsky RAS, RAS academician Mikhail Marov:
- Now, from my point of view, there are no grounds for such a hypothesis, starting from the fact that the hypothesis of the existence of the planet Phaethon itself seems to be very controversial. Firstly, such a large body, comparable to Mars, could not form due to its close location to Jupiter, which is more than 300 times the mass of Earth in mass. Jupiter has a very strong gravitational effect, tidal effects on its immediate surroundings. Such influences will not allow a sufficiently large body to come together.
Secondly, if all even the largest bodies, like Ceres and Vesta, are collected in this area, their total mass will be significantly less than the mass of the planet, 1/1000 of the mass of the Earth. Third, the main asteroid belt is a fairly extended formation, about 70 million km. Within such a belt there are bodies of different chemical and mineral composition, which in no way fit into the idea of a single progenitor planet in their composition.
As for the formation of the Moon, I am inclined to believe that it was most likely a formation from a single protoplanetary cloud. Previously, this hypothesis was developed by Evgenia Ruskol, then by Erik Mikhailovich Galimov, and recently my group at GEOKHI RAS has been working on this theory.
Natalia Vedeneeva