The Earth-Moon system as a typical binary in the Solar System [EPA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1607.07037


Solid embryos of the Earth and the Moon, as well as trans-Neptunian binaries, could form as a result of contraction of the rarefied condensation which was parental for a binary. The angular momentum of the condensation needed for formation of a satellite system could be mainly acquired at the collision of two rarefied condensations at which the parental condensation formed. The minimum value of the mass of the parental condensation for the Earth-Moon system could be about 0.02 of the Earth mass. Besides the main collision, which was followed by formation of the condensation that was a parent for the embryos of the Earth and the Moon, there could be another main collision of the parental condensation with another condensation. The second main collision (or a series of similar collisions) could change the tilt of the Earth. Depending on eccentricities of the planetesimals that collided with the embryos, the Moon could acquire 0.04-0.3 of its mass at the stage of accumulation of solid bodies while the mass of the growing Earth increased by a factor of ten.

Read this paper on arXiv…

S. Ipatov
Tue, 26 Jul 16
62/75

Comments: The paper in SPACEKAZAN-IAPS-2015, ed. by. M.Ya. Marov, Kazan, Publishing house of Kazan University, pp. 97-105 (2015). The international astronomical conference SPACEKAZAN-IAPS-2015 has been held on June 1-7, 2015 in Kazan, Russia. In the attached file, a font size, a page size, and a line spacing are different from those in the proceedings, and so the number of pages is different