The DOI matches its Crossref record; 28 of the 29 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Origin of the Moon in a giant impact near the end of the Earth's formation
Abstract
The Moon is generally believed to have formed from debris ejected by a large off-centre collision with the early Earth. The impact orientation and size are constrained by the angular momentum contained in both the Earth's spin and the Moon's orbit, a quantity that has been nearly conserved over the past 4.5 billion years. Simulations of potential moon-forming impacts now achieve resolutions sufficient to study the production of bound debris. However, identifying impacts capable of yielding the Earth-Moon system has proved difficult. Previous works found that forming the Moon with an appropriate impact angular momentum required the impact to occur when the Earth was only about half formed, a more restrictive and problematic model than that originally envisaged. Here we report a class of impacts that yield an iron-poor Moon, as well as the current masses and angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system. This class of impacts involves a smaller-and thus more likely-object than previously considered viable, and suggests that the Moon formed near the very end of Earth's accumulation.
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“According to the most widely accepted hypothesis, this is when young Earth collided with a Mars-sized object, which led to the formation of the Moon (Canup and Asphaug, 2001).”
From The Astrobiology Primer v2.0 (2016) · cites this paper as Canup and Asphaug, 2001
Citations
Cites
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(1989) · University of Arizona Press eBooks · doi:10.2307/j.ctv20dsb5m · Cited by 505
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Size, Density, and Structure of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 Inferred from the Physics of Tidal Breakup
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Self-citationMETALLIC EQUATIONS OF STATE FOR HYPERVELOCITY IMPACT
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The origin of the moon and the single impact hypothesis IV
Cameron, A. G. W., & Benz, W. (1991) · Icarus · doi:10.1016/0019-1035(91)90046-v · Cited by 237
Lunar accretion from an impact-generated disk
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Self-citation
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Cameron, A. G. W. & Ward, W. R. The origin of the Moon. Lunar Sci. 7, 120–122 (1976).
- Benz, W. in Proc. NATO Adv. Res. Workshop on Numerical Modelling of Nonlinear Stellar Pulsations (ed. Buchler, J. R.) 1–54 (Kluwer Academic, Boston, 1990).
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Lee, C. A., Luffi, P., Plank, T., Dalton, H., & Leeman, W. P. (2009) · Earth and Planetary Science Letters · doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2008.12.020 · Cited by 775
Forming a Moon with an Earth-like composition via a giant impact
Canup, R. M. (2012) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1226073 · Cited by 656
Hf–W chronology of the accretion and early evolution of asteroids and terrestrial planets
Kleine, T., Touboul, M., Bourdon, B., Nimmo, F., Mezger, K., Palme, H., Jacobsen, S. B., Yin, Q., & Halliday, A. N. (2009) · Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta · doi:10.1016/j.gca.2008.11.047 · Cited by 622
Making the Moon from a Fast-Spinning Earth: A Giant Impact Followed by Resonant Despinning
Ćuk, M., & Stewart, S. T. (2012) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1225542 · Cited by 680
The Constitution and Structure of the Lunar Interior
Wieczorek, M. A. (2006) · Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry · doi:10.2138/rmg.2006.60.3 · Cited by 587
Metadata
- Authors
- Canup, R. M., & Asphaug, E.
- Affiliations
- Southwest Research Institute (US)
- University of California, Santa Cruz (US)
- Corresponding author
- Canup, Robin M.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2001-08
- Volume
- 412
- Issue
- 6848
- Pages
- 708-712
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2043818941
- Cited by
- 1,094
- References
- 29
- Citations by year
- 2026: 48 · 2025: 62 · 2024: 65 · 2023: 80 · 2022: 47 · 2021: 56 · 2020: 62 · 2019: 78 · 2018: 64 · 2017: 53 · 2016: 43 · 2015: 47 · 2014: 39 · 2013: 41 · 2012: 43
- FWCI
- 13.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Johns Hopkins University
- Southwest Research Institute
- Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Astro and Planetary Science
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Planetary Science and Exploration
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › History and Developments in Astronomy
- Keywords
- Moon formation, giant impacts, Earth formation, Earth-Moon system, impact ejecta, Earth accretion, impactor size
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