The mystery of the bombing of the moon 3.9 billion years ago has been solved

The surface of the Moon is riddled with craters formed by asteroid collisions. Rock studies have shown that Asteroids landed en masse on the moon about 3.9 billion years ago. So a theory was created about the Great Bombardment. However, until now, it was not known where the rocks that bombarded the moon came from.

Scientists have considered two hypotheses about where the asteroids came from. Someone said that they were remnants of the main period of the formation of the Earth. According to the second, about 3.9 billion years ago, due to the instability of the orbits of gas giants (Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter) in the inner regions of the Solar System, there was a sharp increase in the number of comets and asteroids coming from the outer regions.

Paleontologists from the University of Münster made very precise isotopic measurements of the lunar bombardment rocks. Research showed that there was no sharp increase in the frequency of strikes, and that the remnants of the Earth’s formation were responsible for the bombing of the Moon.

Researchers have focused primarily on studying ruthenium and molybdenum, as these elements show changes in isotopic composition depending on their place of origin in the Solar System. Our research showed that the Moon was bombarded with the same material that the Earth and Moon are made ofSays the study’s lead author, Dr. Emily Warsham. Thus, lunar craters are the remnants of a continuous bombardment of asteroids dating back to the period of formation of our planet.

Such results also made it possible to exclude the hypothesis of a sudden increase in the intensity of the bombing. So the question here is why most of the material in the lunar samples is 3.9 billion years old. It has already been pointed out that the lunar rocks studied so far are mostly material from a single impact basin, the Mari imperium.Warsham explains.

We know from the calculations that at some point in the history of the solar system, the gas giant planets changed hands, causing a lot of material from the outer parts to enter the inner regions of the system. This event must have happened earlier than we previously thought. We found no evidence of any comet or asteroid impact from external regionsProfessor Thorsten Klein adds. The change in the orbits of the giants probably occurred during the main period of the formation of the Earth, the first 100 million years of the solar system’s existence. This dating is in line with the latest dynamic models. This also shows that planets like Earth are fertilized with water from the outer parts of the system very early on. Therefore, the conditions for the emergence of life were established earlyKlein says.

Earth asteroids bombard the great moon