The DOI matches its Crossref record; 30 of the 30 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Forming a Moon with an Earth-like Composition via a Giant Impact
Open accessAbstract
Forming the Moon from Earth It is thought that the Moon formed after a Mars-sized planet hit Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. Computer simulations of this event predict that the Moon was produced primarily from material from the impacting planet. However, the Moon has a similar composition to that of Earth, and the impacting planet would likely have had a different composition. Prior models assumed that the impact left the Earth-Moon system with the same angular momentum as it has today (see the Perspective by Halliday ). Ćuk and Stewart (p. 1047 , published online 17 October; see the cover) show that the angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system could have decreased by half after the Moon-forming impact, opening the door to new impact models. For example, simulations suggest that high-velocity impacts onto a fast-spinning early Earth can lead to a Moon formed primarily from Earth's mantle. Canup (p. 1052 , published online 17 October) considered instead lower-velocity impacts by planets comparable in mass to the proto-Earth, which could generate a Moon and an Earth with similar compositions.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The check wasn’t confident either way, so it gives no verdict — never disputed.
In the citing paper
“however, numerical simulations of a giant impact thought to have formed the Earth-Moon system suggests that over 50 vol% of the Earth's mantle could have melted, indicating a magma ocean to at least 600 km depth”
From Secular change and the onset of plate tectonics on Earth (2020) · cites this paper as Canup, 2012
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Origin of the Moon in a giant impact near the end of the Earth's formation
Canup, R. M., & Asphaug, E. (2001) · Nature · doi:10.1038/35089010 · Cited by 1,094
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
Simulations of a late lunar-forming impact
Canup, R. M. (2004) · Icarus · doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2003.09.028 · Cited by 669
The origin of the Moon and the single-impact hypothesis III
Benz, W., Cameron, A. G. W., & Melosh, H. J. (1989) · Icarus · doi:10.1016/0019-1035(89)90129-2 · Cited by 645
Early solar system timescales according to 53Mn-53Cr systematics
Lugmair, G. W., & Shukolyukov, A. (1998) · Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta · doi:10.1016/s0016-7037(98)00189-6 · Cited by 583
Origin of Nucleosynthetic Isotope Heterogeneity in the Solar Protoplanetary Disk
Trinquier, A., Elliott, T. R., Ulfbeck, D., Coath, C. D., Krot, A. N., & Bizzarro, M. (2009) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1168221 · Cited by 570
Making More Terrestrial Planets
Chambers, J. (2001) · Icarus · doi:10.1006/icar.2001.6639 · Cited by 557
Terrestrial planet formation with strong dynamical friction
OBRIEN, D., MORBIDELLI, A., & LEVISON, H. (2006) · Icarus · doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2006.04.005 · Cited by 467
Late formation and prolonged differentiation of the Moon inferred from W isotopes in lunar metals
Touboul, M., Kleine, T., Bourdon, B., Palme, H., & Wieler, R. (2007) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature06428 · Cited by 466
Oxygen Isotopes and the Moon-Forming Giant Impact
Wiechert, U., Halliday, A. N., Lee, D., Snyder, G. A., Taylor, L. A., & Rumble, D., III (2001) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1063037 · Cited by 459
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- J. A. Wood in Origin of the Moon W. K. Hartmann R. J. Phillips G. J. Taylor Eds. (LPI Houston 1984) pp. 17–55.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The Crust of the Moon as Seen by GRAIL
Wieczorek, M. A., Neumann, G. A., Nimmo, F., Kiefer, W. S., Taylor, G. J., Melosh, H. J., Phillips, R. J., Solomon, S. C., Andrews‐Hanna, J. C., Asmar, S. W., et al. (2012) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1231530 · Cited by 979
The isotopic nature of the Earth’s accreting material through time
Dauphas, N. (2017) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature20830 · Cited by 450
Secular change and the onset of plate tectonics on Earth
Palin, R. M., Santosh, M., Cao, W., Li, S.-S., Hernández-Uribe, D., & Parsons, A. (2020) · Earth-Science Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103172 · Cited by 355
“magma ocean (or crystal-rich mush) to a depth of ~150–300 km below the surface (Hofmeister, 1983; Ohtani, 1985; Elkins-Tanton, 2012); however, numerical simulations of a giant impact thought to have formed the Earth–Moon system suggests that over 50 vol% of the Earth's mantle could have melted, indicating a magma ocea…”
BackgroundThe Origin of the Moon Within a Terrestrial Synestia
Lock, S. J., Stewart, S. T., Petaev, M. I., Leinhardt, Z. M., Mace, M., Jacobsen, S. B., & Ćuk, M. (2018) · Journal of Geophysical Research Planets · doi:10.1002/2017je005333 · Cited by 328
Water delivery and giant impacts in the ‘Grand Tack’ scenario
O'Brien, D. P., Walsh, K. J., Morbidelli, A., Raymond, S. N., & Mandell, A. M. (2014) · Icarus · doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2014.05.009 · Cited by 288
Metadata
- Authors
- Canup, R. M.
- Affiliations
- Southwest Research Institute (US)
- Corresponding author
- Canup, Robin M.
- ORCID
- Canup, Robin M.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2012-11-23
- Volume
- 338
- Issue
- 6110
- Pages
- 1052-1055
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- PMC
- PMC6476314
- OpenAlex
- W2156821519
- Cited by
- 656
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2026: 32 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 48 · 2023: 76 · 2022: 41 · 2021: 62 · 2020: 44 · 2019: 48 · 2018: 41 · 2017: 53 · 2016: 43 · 2015: 44 · 2014: 56 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 22.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NNX13AJ66G)
- 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-Moon system, angular momentum, impact velocity, Earth's mantle, Moon composition, impact simulation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
