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Blue Dot 168: Sister Selene: How Did The Moon-Earth System Come to Be?

NASA

Longtime listeners to Blue Dot know that Dave has a lifelong fascination with the Moon from its exploration to its role in eclipses. But how did our companion world come to be? 

 

Since the Apollo missions brought back lunar samples, the most accepted idea is called the "Giant Impact Hypothesis" but the notion has its flaws -- mainly that if a Mars-sized object actually did hit the Earth and create the Moon, where is the evidence in the Moon rocks which are isotopically identical to Earth's?

Enter the recent work by Dr. Sarah Stewart, a MacArthur "genius grant" winner from UC Davis whose team has developed an intriguing new twist on the impact hypothesis.

 

Using state of the art computer models and high energy laboratory experiments, Stewart and her colleagues including Simon Locke from Cal Tech have a new way to look at how impacts affect the planetary formation process in general and the peculiar Earth-Moon system (which is more like a double planet) in particular. It's not just howling at the Moon!

 

Dave Schlom is the longtime host and creator of Blue Dot. From surfing to Voyager in interstellar space, rock guitar to orcas in our imperiled oceans, the topics on Blue Dot are as varied as the host’s interests and connections -- which are pretty limitless! An internationally respected space history journalist, Dave is also deeply fascinated by all aspects of the grand workings of nature’s awesome machinery on scales ranging from galactic to subatomic. And topics take in all aspects of the arts and sciences.
Matt Fidler is a producer and sound designer with over 15 years’ experience producing nationally distributed public radio programs. He has worked for shows such as Freakonomics Radio, Selected Shorts, Studio 360, The New Yorker Radio Hour and The Takeaway. In 2017, Matt launched the language podcast Very Bad Words, hitting the #28 spot in the iTunes podcast charts.