Back When Earth And Our Moon Were Positioned Nearer To Each Other, There May Have Been Moonlets Circling The Duo
Back when Earth and our moon were positioned nearer to each other, there may have been moonlets circling the duo.
Similar moonlets could be orbiting distant exoplanets and their moons right now, according to a new study.
Currently, the moon revolves around the Earth at a distance of roughly 239,000 miles, which is about 30 times the size of Earth’s diameter.
Over time, the Earth and moon are projected to grow farther apart at the rate of approximately 1.5 inches every year, per NASA.
In the past, the moon and our planet were much closer together. About 4.5 billion years ago, the moon formed after a giant collision between a rock the size of Mars and the newborn Earth.
The collision shot debris into space at a distance of roughly 11,890 miles. The moon was formed from this debris.
At present, the moon’s orbit around Earth is titled by five degrees. Previous research has indicated that as a newborn, the moon’s orbit was inclined by at least 10 degrees.
It is unclear why the moon’s orbit was so tilted around the time it was formed. Scientists expected the moon to form in alignment with the Earth’s orbit around the sun.
In the new study, researchers investigated the impact that formed the moon to try to explain why the moon’s orbit has changed over time.
janez volmajer – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
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According to Stephen Lepp, a study co-author and astrophysicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, there were a lot more smaller planetary bodies and debris in the solar system than there are today.
Most of the debris from the moon’s formation likely collided with the Earth or moon, or was thrown past both.
But, some of it could have ended up revolving around the Earth and moon in circumbinary orbits. They would have orbited the poles of the Earth and the moon instead of around their equators.
No stable polar circumbinary orbits around Earth and the moon are present today, but the researchers discovered that such orbits were stable at the time of the formation of the moon.
It wasn’t until after the distance between the moon and Earth stretched to 7.5 times the Earth’s diameter that the orbits ceased to exist.
“Most works on the dynamics of orbits around the Earth-moon system has concentrated on the current orbital configuration,” Rebecca Martin, a study co-author and astrophysicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said.
“When we found that the current configuration wouldn’t support polar orbits, we decided to look at earlier times when the separation between the Earth and the moon was much smaller.”
In early times, a companion moon or disk in a polar orbit around the moon and Earth might have significantly affected the evolution of the moon-Earth orbit, which could explain its modern-day features.
Even though polar material is long gone now, studies of orbits in exoplanetary systems could clarify some of the dynamics.
The study was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.
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