translated from Spanish: The planetary megacolision which could have formed the Moon and made possible the life on Earth

not that We have been created by little green men as those who usually appear in science fiction films, not.
But a study by Rice University, in Texas, United States, published this week by the scientific journal Science Advances points out that a planetary collision occurred 4.400 million years ago brought our planet the fundamental elements for the emergence of life.
“Our study indicates that the Earth acquired its share of elements essential to life in a very late stage of its accretion, possibly through the same impact that formed the Moon,” said BBC News Brazil geologist and scientist Damanveer Grewal.
Who has control over the Moon and its resources?
“We went to explore the Moon and discovered the Earth”: 50 years of Earthrise, the photo that changed the way we see the world in Astrophysics, accretion is the name given to the accumulation of material on the surface of a star by the action of gravity.
“As the Earth has a long history of growth, spaced by accumulations of several million years, giant impacts should have played a role primary in the origin of life on our planet”, said the expert.
“Key elements for life” in an interview with BBC News Brazil, geologist and scientist specializing in planets Rajdeep Dasgupta recalled that “the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus are key to life such as the” We know”.
“Without carbon, nitrogen and sulphur is not possible to produce hydrocarbons, amino acids and proteins necessary for life, so we concentrate on the origin of some of these key elements”, he explained.
The team from Rice University, in Texas, USA, which published the study. Rights of image JEFF FITLOW / RICE UNIVERSITY “not cannot rule out the possibility that the Earth has become the necessary dose of essential elements for life without having suffered episodes of giant impacts; However, the inventory of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur accessible on our planet aims to its origin via a giant impact, as suggested in our study”.
According to researchers, thanks to the study of primitive meteorites known long ago that rocky planets like the Earth had, in its origin, few volatile materials.
“The timing and the mechanism that led to the land to acquire such items raises excited discussions,” says Dasgupta.
“Our hypothesis can explain this phenomenon in a manner consistent with all the geochemical evidence.”
Simulations the researchers compiled the results of a series of experiments under high temperature and pressure in a laboratory specialized in the Rice University.
There, simulated reactions geochemical which had occurred on Earth billions of years ago.
They departed from an existing theory that holds that the volatile compounds of the Earth originated from a collision with a planet whose nucleus was rich in sulfur – which is known as “donor planet”.
“Our main challenge was to explain why the Earth’s surface has a ratio of carbon and nitrogen that is clearly higher than that of the primitive meteorites,” Grewal said.
Experts believe that the Earth collided with a planet the size of Mars and it is likely that handled the planet Theia “our experiments showed that if a rocky planet’s core is rich in sulfur, then carbon is expelled from it in a proportion greater than nitrogen”.
Through these simulations, the scientists concluded that to make it happen that “donor planet” should have the size of Mars.
I.e. it would have treated a gigantic collision. And everything indicates that it would be the same collision that formed the moon.
The theory of the great impact the more accepted theory today by the scientific community to explain the formation of the Moon is called the impact hypothesis.
How the collision with another planet formed the Moon?
Presented in 1975 by researchers from the Institute of Planetary Sciences of Tucson and the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics, theory holds that 4.400 million years ago a planet about the size of Mars, called Theia (or Tea), collided with the Land.
“Planetary impacts occur throughout the history of the solar system”, explains Professor Dasgupta. “These impacts occur even today, although with one much lower frequency, and the planets colliding tend to be much smaller.”
“The planetary impacts were much more frequent in the first tens of millions of years of the history of the solar system,” he adds.
At that time the Protoplanetary Disk (a disk of material around a young star, where the formation of planets occurs) it was still evolving and the orbits of several bodies were still being established.
It is believed that 90% of the Moon comes from the planet TheiaLa giant collision, which would have occurred about 40,000 kilometres per hour, would not have been, but side.
It is believed that the impact broke a lot of material, forming the moon. Experts estimate that 90% of the lunar composition is originally from the ancient planet Theia.
The theory holds that the material that gave origin to the Moon stabilized at about 22,000 kilometers of land, 27 hours after the collision (the current distance from the Earth to the Moon today is 385.000 km).
The rest of Theia would have been incorporated throughout the land. And, according to noted scientists, this material would have brought the conditions for the emergence of life on our planet.
“The conclusion that the volatile Earth body originated from a planet the size of Mars came from the combination of our experimental measurements, where we show how the carbon and nitrogen can be separated one from the other during the formation of the nucleus of a” planet, with a rich core in sulphur “, says Professor Dasgupta.” These simulations proved that the greater probability of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur is when the size of collision body is that of a large planet”.
To reach such a conclusion, the scientists made computer models. They tested about 1,000 million of different scenarios, with known conditions of the solar system.
“It was that we discovered all the evidence – isotope signatures, relationship between carbon and nitrogen and total amounts of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur on Earth – consistent with the impact that formed the Moon: a planet the size of Mars with sulfur-rich nucleus”, Grewal said.
A megacolision with the planet Theia theory could explain why the Earth and the moon are “geochemically similar”, say scientists “This also explains why the Earth and the moon are geochemically similar”, complete Dasgupta.
Life on other planets scientist says that understanding how life formed on earth can make research on similar phenomena in other planets.
“The study indicates that a rocky planet like Earth is more likely to acquire essential elements for life if it is formed and grows from giant impacts with planets that have different elements in their composition”, says.
Without a doubt it is an interesting when it comes to point the telescopes into space.

Original source in Spanish