Astronomers of the Paris Institute of Geophysics have found that the existing hypothesis about the origin of the moon, according to which the latter was formed as a result of the collision of the Earth with the planet Theia the size of Mars, cannot explain the mineral composition of the satellite. The computer model showed that the wanderer planet should have been much smaller. Writes about this Daily Mail.
Researchers have conducted more than two billion simulations of the collision of the Earth and Theia. They found that if the mass of the rogue planet was more than 15 percent of the mass of our planet, then the earth's mantle would contain more nickel and cobalt than it currently does.
According to another version, proposed by scientists at the Southwestern Institute of Colorado, after the collision, the young Earth was subjected to numerous impacts of small cosmic bodies. This bombardment, called late accretion, altered the planet's chemical content, enriching its core with gold, silver and platinum. The new hypothesis explains the origin of anomalies in the mineral composition of ancient rocks.