Why is the Moon so similar to Earth? ⚡ экспресс
Imagine that after a cosmic collision between two worlds, their material separated like oil and water: the lighter proto-Earth material ended up on the outside, while the impactor’s material stayed inside. That’s how the Moon got its Earth-like appearance, even though it’s different on the inside. Could this explain why we don’t see traces of another planet?
The collision that birthed the Moon has long been puzzling: by all accounts, the cloud of cosmic dust after the impact was mostly Theia material. Yet when scientists read the chemical fingerprints of lunar rocks, they turned out nearly indistinguishable from Earth’s. The Moon flashes an Earth passport, but its suitcase is packed with alien stuff.
The answer lies in hidden layering. If Theia was richer in iron, its material was denser. The newborn Moon was a ball of molten rock. As it cooled, heavy Theian fragments sank, while lighter Earth-like ones floated up and solidified into crust. So the top layer inherited Earth’s composition, while the “filling” stayed foreign. If we could drill through the Moon, beyond the familiar crust we’d hit a layer of material from a vanished planet.
Similar processes likely occurred on other bodies in the galaxy, hiding the history of cosmic catastrophes deep inside.
🎯 If astronauts drilled deep enough into the Moon, they’d hit a layer with a completely alien chemistry — a real hello from vanished Theia.
🎬 Like in Jules Verne’s ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth,’ the Moon might harbor another world inside — not fictional, but a real shard of a vanished planet.