{"id":243510,"date":"2026-09-02T05:41:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T10:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/giant-impact-could-have-formed-an-intact-moon-within-five-hours-simulations-suggest"},"modified":"2026-09-02T05:41:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T10:41:49","slug":"giant-impact-could-have-formed-an-intact-moon-within-five-hours-simulations-suggest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/giant-impact-could-have-formed-an-intact-moon-within-five-hours-simulations-suggest","title":{"rendered":"Giant impact could have formed an intact moon within five hours, simulations suggest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QAIRqc9dFHg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>New Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) modeling, conducted in collaboration with scientists at the University of Arizona, shows fundamental differences in how the moon may have formed from the giant impact that created the Earth\u2013moon system. The new results used state-of-the-art computational techniques that factor in the material strength of the two colliding planets. These impact simulations could change how researchers understand moon formation and may help constrain the timing of the event. The research is <a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/2041-8213\/ae91e9\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe discovered that the preexisting geology of the Mars-sized proto-moon matters,\u201d said Dr. Adeene Denton, formerly a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow at SwRI and now a postdoctoral researcher in SwRI\u2019s Solar System Science and Exploration Division. \u201cWhen you simulate the Earth and the moon as colliding bodies with geologic properties, it changes how the moon forms out of that impact\u2014that\u2019s something we considered unnecessary before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Earlier studies of the giant impact scenario included a foundational <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/35089010\" target=\"_blank\">2001 paper<\/a> by Dr. Robin Canup, vice president of SwRI\u2019s Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado, and Dr. Erik Asphaug, a professor at the University of Arizona and co-author of the current study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) modeling, conducted in collaboration with scientists at the University of Arizona, shows fundamental differences in how the moon may have formed from the giant impact that created the Earth\u2013moon system. The new results used state-of-the-art computational techniques that factor in the material strength of the two colliding planets. These impact [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}