images

Moon Little splat

by

Ron Miller/Novapix

Reference

a-lun99-00021

Date

2017-01-14

10 million years after Moon's cooling: Today's moon was not the only one formed from the ring. There were several others, orbiting at the Lagrange points. The orbit of one was not stable and it eventually drifted into the larger moon in a slow-motion impact that caused the smaller satellite to pancake, spreading itself over an entire hemisphere, creating the mismatched sides the moon has today. An unlucky witness to the "little splat" would have seen a tsunami of molten rock roaring up over the horizon