New research has revealed exciting details regarding the massive collision event that shaped our Solar System’s history. Scientists have concluded that the impact between a Mars-sized object and the early form of Earth, known as the Proto-Earth, created the Moon and also left behind alien blobs inside of our planet.
The powerful collision between the Proto-Earth and a Mars-sized object occurred about 4.5 billion years ago and rocked the newly formed Solar System. The details of this event have long been debated by scientists, and the prevailing theory remained that the impact formed our Moon.
But now new evidence indicates that this momentous event also created the first and the last of its kind-alien blobs. Scientists have found that these blobs are extremely old and are responsible for the Earth’s uneven distribution of water and other materials within its mantle, the layer of hot, molten rock beneath the planet’s surface.
The newly discovered blobs, nicknamed “gyres” by the research team, are believed to have formed in the aftermath of the impact between the Proto-Earth and the Mars-sized object. According to the study, the immense energy generated by this collision event forced material that originally existed in the Earth’s mantle to accumulate in the center of the gyres, leaving the underlying mantle weakened and uneven.
The researchers also found that the gyres may have affected the distribution of water and other materials within the Earth’s mantle, making them a vital part of the planet’s evolution. In addition, this also caused the appearance of provinces in the mantle, which, in turn, may have played a part in the Earth’s core formation process.
The details of this study, published in the journal Nature, are helping scientists to put together the pieces of how the Earth and the Moon were formed. This helps to further illustrate the breathtaking complexity of the solar system, as it emerged from a massive collision event, and the profound implications for life on Earth.