14 Comments
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Daniel Nest's avatar

Sure, I guess our Moon is all essential and stuff, but don't those Saturn-like rings look way cooler?

Thanks for nothing, Moon!

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I think we'd still get some of the stability benefits... maybe we can nuke the moon and make rings!

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Daniel Nest's avatar

That's the first sane and reasonable suggestion I'd heard from you in months!

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Lest you think I'm starting to get soft in my old age, I had better do something less sane and reasonable today. That settles it: I'm having another cup of coffee!

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Daniel Nest's avatar

Living on the edge, man!

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Randall Hayes's avatar

Been watching multiple Naked Science episodes about our magnetic field, and the fact that Venus and Mars don't have them (at least not any more). We may owe that to Theia too -- Earth's iron core being a little bigger and spinning a little faster .

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Very true! Both our atmoshpere and our magnetic fields are very likely due to this impact. It's pretty awesome to think about the moment of impact, just trying to imagine how immense that event really was... and it took some time to play out, too!

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Praveen Raj S G's avatar

When I think all of this happened just by chance, it doesn't sound so plausible to me. Maybe there is some inexplicable mystery in the universe. We haven't been able to decipher it and the terms like chance, god are those we invent to make sense of the world around us.

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Adetokunbo Abiola's avatar

Vividly written. The event comes to life.

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Joyce Wycoff's avatar

Thanks, Theia ... just the blessing I needed this am. Amazing how many amazing things had to happen for us to be here. Makes you wonder, huh? And, what happened to Theia? Did she crash into other worlds or did she give her life for ours?

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I'm pretty confident that she gave her life for ours. Earth and Theia merged together, making Proto-Earth bigger, but also giving us a brand new satellite. I think that, between the Moon goo and the increased size of Earth, Theia kind of lives on in us (metaphorically and literally).

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Joyce Wycoff's avatar

Thanks … hadn’t thought about her being part of us.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I think about our ingredients all the time.

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EJ Trask's avatar

wow I had no idea

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