Scientists have explained why the Moon orbits the Earth by “degrees” – Moskovsky Komsomolets

In the past our planet companion fell under the “bad influence” large protoplanets colliding with the Earth

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The axis of rotation and the plane of the Moon’s orbit is slightly inclined relative to the ecliptic – the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun – from the fact that in the distant past by her flying large protoplanetary bodies that had fallen to Earth and gave her a gold and other precious metals, said in an article published in the journal Nature.

Photo: morguefile.com

One of the main mysteries of the Moon today is why its orbit is inclined to the plane of Earth’s orbit by about 5 degrees. Calculations show that in the past it has been further tilted – 10 degrees. It can not be explained by modern planetologicheskih theories – if the moon really was born in a clash “embryo” of the planet and the Earth, then the angle of inclination of its orbit to be 10 times smaller, that is 1 degree.

Cave Pahlevan (Kaveh Pahlevan) and Alessandro Morbidelli (Alessandro Morbidelli) from the University of the Côte d’Azur in Nice (France) figured out how this could happen, and in the process found an explanation of how any reserves of gold, platinum and other precious and heavy metals on the Earth’s surface, creating a computer model of the evolution of the Earth and the Moon.

It is believed that during the formation of the Earth “heavy” elements – iron, platinum, gold and other precious metals – “drowned” in the mantle of the planet and formed a solid metallic core. On the other hand, in the crust and upper mantle of these elements is much greater than that predicted by the theory of the birth of the world.

Most of the scientists explain this by the fact that large asteroids bombard the Earth’s surface after the formation of the core, left on the surface of the crust and mantle “raid” of gold and other heavy metals. If this happens, the question arises – how these asteroids could fly past the moon, and not leave her much larger number of craters, than it is today can be seen on its surface.

Pahlevan and Morbidelli have suggested that this may be due to the fact that the Earth is bombarded with plenty of not quite small asteroids, and a small number of large protoplanetary bodies, comparable in size to the Moon.

They tested this idea with the help of a supercomputer. As it turned out, such a scenario is quite feasible, and in addition to this, it helps to solve the riddle of the inclination of the orbit of the moon.

The calculations show that such protoplanety- “zolotovozy” will fall to the surface of the Earth is not at once – after the rapprochement with Earth-Moon system, they should spend tens of thousands of years, more and more closely approaching the Earth. This convergence will be very significant effect on the position of the moon in orbit, causing it to move “up” or “down” with respect to the equatorial plane of the Earth, which used to be the companion of our planet and move in an orbit inclined at a large angle to the plane of the ecliptic.

Eventually, after several similar encounters and clashes, the moon gradually returned to her place, but took a little biased position – its orbit is inclined at about 10 degrees relative to the plane of the ecliptic. As a result, there are two things – Earth received its gold reserves, which mankind enjoys today, and the moon has shifted in a way that total solar eclipses occur today than every 30 days, and much less, the scientists conclude.