Recently in several articles in the major news outlets, a story is running about a developing theory of why we always see the man on the moon. One of the articles is titled:
Earth's two moons? It's not lunacy, but new theory. I found a similar article in the
LA Times a lot more informative and just flat-out-better overall.
Basically 4.5 billion years ago, a little moon about one third the diameter of our moon and 25 times smaller hit the moon traveling at a relative speed of 5000 mph. This means that the collision was slow, or at least slow enough to not melt rocks. Yet the whole episode is theorized to have taken ONLY 3 HOURS. And in that time the little "moonlet" wasn't touching the moon to having one mass that had already returned to a sphere because of the moon's gravity.
I'll tell you what though, it would be way cool to see the animation of the 3D model simulation! Because whatever made the image that I started out with is pretty B.A.
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