The Question

(Submitted February 15, 1998)

What different types of galaxies are there? What are their similarities
and differences?

The Answer

There are indeed different types of galaxies. The main types are spiral
galaxies (like our own MilkyWay), elliptical galaxies and irregular
galaxies. An irregular galaxy has an undefined shape and has lots of
young stars, dust and gas. A spiral galaxy is shaped like a disk, usually
with a bulge in the center and with arms that spiral outwards as the
galaxy rotates. Spiral galaxies tend to contain more middle-
aged stars along with clouds of gas and dust. Elliptical galaxies contain
older stars and very little gas and dust. They can be different shapes
ranging from round, to flattened, elongated spheres.

The Question

(Submitted December 05, 2000)

What is the average size of a galaxy?

The Answer

Thank you for your question. Our Milky Way galaxy is a pretty typical
large galaxy. Most of the stars are in a disk that is about 100,000 light
years across in diameter and 3000 light years thick. Most of the galaxies
in the universe are actually smaller than the Milky Way. For example,
most of the dozens of galaxies in our Local Group are at least ten times
smaller in diameter.

The History of India in Space

 Space technology has allowed the nation of India to
move into the world of high technology, a place
previously occupied only by more-developed nations.

India has been up there since July 18, 1980, when it

became the eighth to demonstrate it could send a
satellite to orbit above Earth. India launched the
satellite Rohini 1 on an Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV)
rocket from the Sriharikota Island launch site.

Indian cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma spent eight days in

1984 aboard the USSR's space station Salyut 7.

In recent years, India has concentrated much of its

space development work on complex applications
satellites and more powerful rockets. The nation's two
main interests are satellites for remote sensing and
communications -- used for weather pictures, disaster
warnings and feeds to 552 television and 164 radio
stations on the ground.

Here's a partial chronology:

India launches a powerful GSLV rocket
toward space • 1963 - The first sounding rocket was
launched Nov. 21 from TERLS.

• 1965 -Space Science & Technology Centre (SSTC) was established in Thumba.

• 1967 - Satellite Telecommunication Earth Station was erected at Ahmedabad.

• 1969 - Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was created August 15 in the
Department of Atomic Energy. Since then, ISRO has managed India's space research and
the uses of space for peaceful puroposes.

• 1972 - The government established the Space Commission and the Department of Space
(DOS) in June. DOS conducts the nation's space activities for ISRO at four space centres
across the country. DOS reports directly to the Prime Minister.

• 1972 - ISRO placed under DOS on June 1.

• 1975 - ISRO made a Government Organisation on April 1.

• 1975 - Aryabhata, the first Indian space satellite, was launched for India on April 19.

• 1979 - Bhaskara-I, an experimental satellite for earth observations, launched on June 7.

• 1979 - The first experimental launch of an SLV-3 rocket on August 10 did not place its
Rohini Technology Payload satellite in orbit.

• 1980 - India successfully launched its own Rohini-1 satellite on July 18 on a Satellite Launch
Vehicle (SLV) rocket from the Sriharikota Island launch site.

• 1983 - The Rohini-3 communications satellite, launched in August, had by the end of 1985
extended nationwide television coverage from 20 percent to 70 percent of the population.
Today it is about 90 percent.
 • 1984 - The first Indian cosmonaut became the 138th man in space when he spent eight
days aboard the USSR's space station Salyut 7. Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma, a 35 year
old Indian Air Force pilot, was launched to space along with two Soviet cosmonauts aboard
Soyuz T-11 on April 2. While in space, Sharma conducted multispectral photography of the
northern region of India in preparation for construction of hydroelectric power stations in
the Himalayas. Sharma and his backup, Wing Commander Ravish Malhotra, had prepared in
advance an elaborate series of zero-gravity Yoga exercises that Sharma carried out while
aboard Salyut 7. Indian Space Research Organisation's manned space program has
depended for the most part on the Soviet Union.

• 1987 - The first developmental launch of a larger Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle
(ASLV) rocket on March 24 did not place its SROSS-1 satellite in orbit. It could lift a 300-lb.
satellite to an orbit 250 miles above Earth.

• 1988 - The second developmental launch of an ASLV in July also failed. Later, the third and
fourth attempts would be successful.

• 1992 - The Indian-built INSAT-2 geostationary communications and meteorological satellite

superseded an American-built INSAT-1.

• 1993 - The even larger Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) debuted in September, but
failed to attain orbit. Its individual elements were successful. PSLV can lift a one-ton
satellite to a Sun-synchronous polar orbit.

• 2001 -- The first launch of a still larger Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV)
rocket was successful on April 18. GSLV can boost a 2.5-ton satellite. In addition to placing
large communications and weather satellites in high stationary orbits, India plans to use
GSLV rockets to send probes away from Earth to explore the planets. Missions to Mercury,
Venus and Mars are under consideration.

India in Space Pioneers

Vikram Sarabhai. Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai founded
India's space program after envisioning Indian satellites
that could provide communications, meteorology, remote
sensing, and direct-to-home television broadcasting.

He founded the Physical Research Laboratory, the Space

Science Research Institute, the Department of Space, and
the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

In 1962, Sarabhai organized space research as chairman of

Indian National Committee for Space Research
(INCOSPAR). He set up of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket
Launching Station and began manufacturing sounding
rockets in India. He drew up plans to transmit education to
Vikram Sarabhai
remote villages across India with the Satellite Instructional
Television Experiment (SITE).
After Sarabhai died in 1971, the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center
(VSSC) in Tiruvananthapuram is named for him.

Satish Dhawan. Another early dedveloper of India's space

program was Satish Dhawan. He was the longest serving director
of the Indian Institute of Science when he died in 2002.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked him to head the nation's space
program. When the space scientist and former chairman of ISRO
died, Indian President, K. R. Narayanan said, "India's space
programmes owe to a great extent its spectacular growth and high
level of maturity to the stewardship and visionary leadership of
Prof. Dhawan."
Satish Dhawan in
The Hindu newspaper
(Source: www.spacetoday.org)
Earth's location in the universe
Our knowledge of Earth's location in the universe has been shaped by 400 years of
telescopic observations, and has expanded radically in the last century. Initially, Earth
was believed to be the center of the universe, which consisted only of those planets
visible with the naked eyeand an outlying sphere of fixed stars. After the acceptance of
the heliocentric model in the 17th century, observations by William Herscheland others
showed that Earth's Sun lay within a vast, disc-shaped galaxy of stars, later revealed to be
suns like our own. By the 20th century, observations of spiral nebulae revealed that our
galaxy was only one of billions in an expanding universe, grouped into clusters
andsuperclusters. By the 21st century, the overall structure of the visible universe was
becoming clearer, with superclusters forming into a vast web of filaments and voids.
Superclusters, filaments and voids are likely the largest coherent structures that exist in
the Universe. At still larger scales (over 1000 megaparsecs)[e] the Universe becomes
homogeneous meaning that all its parts have on average the same density, composition
and structure.[citation needed] At such scales the question of Earth's location in the universe
becomes practically meaningless, though there is a speculation that our universe might
only be one of countless billions in the multiverse or omniverse.

In the search for other planetary systems like Earth that are capable of hosting extraterrestrial life,
scientists have come across some very alien systems indeed. But the latest ones have
researchers truly perplexed.
New observations have found evidence for planet formation around stars much more massive
than the sun, as well as dusty debris – thought to be leftovers from collisions between
rocky planetary embryos. There's a twist: The dust has a completely different chemical makeup
from the composition ofour own solar system.
These new findings were presented this month at the 215th meeting of the American
Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C.

Alien dust
The strange dust that shows different chemical markers than what we find in our own
neighborhood is in a star system about 500 light-years from Earth.
The parent star, known as HD 131488, is surrounded by warm dust in a region called
the terrestrial planet zone, where the star heats dust to temperatures similar to those found on
Earth.
Infrared imaging and spectroscopic measurements of the system, performed by the Gemini South
Telescope in Chile, showed the unusual chemical composition.
"Typically, dust debris around other stars, or our own sun, is of the olivine, pyroxene, or silica
variety – minerals commonly found on Earth," said Carl Melis, who led the research while a
graduate student at UCLA. "The material orbiting HD 131488 is not one of these dust types. We
have yet to identify what species it is – it really appears to be a completely alien type of dust."
Melis and his team think that the most plausible explanation for the presence of the warm dust is
a recent collision between two rocky planetary-mass bodies.
Cold dust
While the warm dust is located at a distance from HD 131488 comparable to that between the
Earth and the sun, Melis and his team also found cooler dust about 45 times farther out. This
distance is analogous to the Kuiper Belt in our own solar system. The detection of both cold and
warm dust around a young star is unusual, the team noted.
"Although dusty telltales of planetary formation processes in the outer regions surrounding young
stars have often been seen with infrared-sensitive space telescopes, for some reason stars that
have large amounts of orbiting warm dust do not also show evidence for the presence of cold
dust," said Benjamin Zuckerman, also of UCLA. "HD 131488 dramatically breaks this pattern."
The cooler dust likely did not result from planetary collisions, and is instead probably the leftovers
of planet formation that took place farther away from the sun, Melis said.
HD 131488 joins five other stars with masses a few times larger than the sun that show evidence
of dust in their terrestrial planet zones. All five are young stars, around 10 million to 30 million
years old (the sun, by comparison, is 4.5 billion years old).
"This finding indicates that the epoch of final catastrophic mass accretion for terrestrial planets,
the likes of which could have resulted in the formation of the Earth-moon system in our own solar
system, occurs in this narrow age range for stars somewhat more massive than our sun," Melis
said.
The team plans to further study HD 131488 to try and determine what strange minerals make up
its dust, as well as look for evidence of rocky planet formation around other stars.
Massive stars
More dusty evidence of planet-forming disks around other stars has also been found around stars
that are much heftier than the sun.
Xavier Koenig of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and his colleagues examined
the star-forming region called W5, which lies about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation
Cassiopeia.
They looked at over 500 type A and B stars, which are stars about two to 15 times more
massive than the sun. Around one-tenth of those stars, the astronomers found evidence of dusty
disks. And of those, 15 disks showed signs of clearing that suggest that newborn Jupiter-sized
planet are sucking up some of the dusty material as they form.
"We think we've found evidence for planets forming around stars twice the mass of the sun, and
even bigger stars," Koenig said.
Because these stars are only 2 million-to-5 million years old (our sun is middle-aged by
comparison), and the fierce stellar winds from them are expected to rapidly destroy any dust
disks around them, the new findings indicate that planets must form quickly or not at all – at least
around more massive stars.
The unfriendly nature of these possible planetary systems combined with the short lifetimes of
these stars (around 10 million to 500 million years) means that these systems are unlikely to
harbor any higher forms of life.
"These stars aren't good targets in the hunt for extraterrestrials," Koenig said.
But these systems will help astronomer to learn more about planet formation across the broad
range of stellar systems in our galaxy.
"We want to understand what kind of planets form in what stellar systems," Koenig said. And if
the evidence his team found holds up, "this will tell us that planet formation is both a natural and
common result of star formation," he added.

History of the Earth:

The history of the Earth describes the most important events and fundamental stages in the
development of the planet Earth from its formation 4.6 billion years ago to the present day.
[1]
Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to the understanding of the main events
of the Earth's past. The age of Earth is approximately one-third of the age of the universe.
[2]
Immense geological andbiological changes have occurred during that time span.

Hadean and Archaean

Starting with the Earth's formation by accretion from the solar nebula 4.54 billion years
ago (4.54 Ga),[1] the first eon in the Earth's history is called the Hadean.[3] It lasted until the
Archaean eon, which began 3.8 Ga. The oldest rocks found on Earth date to about 4.0 Ga, and
the oldest detrital zircon crystals in some rocks have been dated to about 4.4 Ga,[4] close to the
formation of the Earth's crust and the Earth itself. Because not much material from this time is
preserved, little is known about Hadean times, but scientists hypothesize at an estimated 4.53
Ga,[nb 1] shortly after formation of an initial crust, the proto-Earth was impacted by a
smaller protoplanet, which ejected part of themantle and crust into space and created the Moon.[6]
[7][8]
During the Hadean, the Earth's surface was under a continuous bombardment by meteorites, and
volcanism must have been severe due to the large heat flow and geothermal gradient. The
detrital zircon crystals dated to 4.4 Ga show evidence of having undergone contact with liquid
water, considered as proof that the planet already had oceans or seas at that time.[4] From crater
counts on other celestial bodies it is inferred that a period of intense meteorite impacts, called the
"Late Heavy Bombardment", began about 4.1 Ga, and concluded around 3.8 Ga, at the end of
the Hadean.[9]

By the beginning of the Archaean, the Earth had cooled significantly. It would have been
impossible for most present day life forms to exist due to the composition of the Archaean
atmosphere, which lacked oxygen and an ozone layer. Nevertheless it is believed that primordial
life began to evolve by the early Archaean, with some possible fossil finds dated to around 3.5
Ga.[10] Some researchers, however, speculate that life could have begun during the early Hadean,
as far back as 4.4 Ga, surviving the possible Late Heavy Bombardment period inhydrothermal
vents below the Earth's surface.

Origin of the solar system

The Solar System (including the Earth) formed from a large, rotating cloud of
interstellar dust andgas called the solar nebula, orbiting the Milky Way's galactic center. It was
composed of hydrogenand helium created shortly after the Big Bang 13.7 Ga and
heavier elements ejected bysupernovas.[12] About 4.6 Ga, the solar nebula began to contract,
possibly due to the shock waveof a nearby supernova. Such a shock wave would have also
caused the nebula to rotate and gainangular momentum. As the cloud began to accelerate
its rotation, gravity and inertia flattened it into a protoplanetary disk oriented perpendicularly to its
axis of rotation. Most of the mass concentrated in the middle and began to heat up, but
small perturbations due to collisions and the angular momentum of other large debris created the
means by which protoplanets up to several kilometres in length began to form, orbiting the
nebular center.

The infall of material, increase in rotational speed and the crush of gravity created an enormous
amount of kinetic heat at the center. Its inability to transfer that energy away through any other
process at a rate capable of relieving the build-up resulted in the disk's center heating up.
Ultimately, nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium began, and eventually, after contraction, a T
Tauri star ignited to create the Sun. Meanwhile, as gravity caused matter to condense around the
previously perturbed objects outside the gravitational grasp of the new sun, dust particles and the
rest of the protoplanetary disk began separating into rings. Successively larger fragments collided
with one another and became larger objects, ultimately becoming protoplanets.[13] These included
one collection about 150 million kilometers from the center: Earth. The planet formed about 4.54
billion years ago (within an uncertainty of 1%)[1] and was largely completed within 10–
20 million years.[14] The solar wind of the newly formed T Tauri star cleared out most of the
material in the disk that had not already condensed into larger bodies.

Computer simulations have shown that planets with distances equal to the terrestrial planets in
our solar system can be created from a protoplanetary disk.[15] The now widely accepted nebular
hypothesis suggests that the same process, which gave rise to the solar system's planets,
produces accretion disks around virtually all newly forming stars in the universe, some of which
yield planets.

Origin of the Earth's core and first atmosphere

The Proto-Earth grew by accretion, until the inner part of the protoplanet was hot enough to melt
the heavy, siderophile metals. Such liquid metals, with now higher densities, began to sink to the
Earth's center of mass. This so called iron catastrophe resulted in the separation of aprimitive
mantle and a (metallic) core only 10 million years after the Earth began to form, producing the
layered structure of Earth and setting up the formation of Earth's magnetic field.

During the accretion of material to the protoplanet, a cloud of gaseous silica must have
surrounded the Earth, to condense afterwards as solidrocks on the surface. What was left
surrounding the planet was an early atmosphere of light (atmophile) elements from the solar
nebula, mostly hydrogen and helium, but the solar wind and Earth's heat would have driven off
this atmosphere.

This changed when Earth accreted to about 40% its present radius, and gravitational attraction
retained an atmosphere which included water.

The giant impact hypothesis

The Earth's relatively large natural satellite, the Moon, is unique.[nb 2] During the Apollo
program, rocks from the Moon's surface were brought to Earth. Radiometric dating of these
rocks has shown the Moon to be 4527 ± 10 million years old,[17] about 30 to 55 million years
younger than other bodies in the solar system.[18] (New evidence suggests the Moon formed
even later, 4.48±0.02 Ga, or 70–110 Ma after the start of the Solar System.[5]) Another
notable feature is the relatively low density of the Moon, which must mean it does not have
a large metallic core, like all other terrestrial bodies in the solar system. The Moon has a
bulk composition closely resembling the Earth's mantle and crust together, without the
Earth's core. This has led to the giant impact hypothesis, the idea that the Moon was formed
during a giant impact of the proto-Earth with another protoplanet by accretion of the material
blown off the mantles of the proto-Earth and impactor.[19][8]

The impactor, sometimes named Theia, is thought to have been a little smaller than the
current planet Mars. It could have formed by accretion of matter about 150 million kilometres
from the Sun and Earth, at their fourth or fifth Lagrangian point. Its orbit may have been
stable at first, but destabilized as Theia's mass increased due to the accretion of matter.
Theia oscillated in larger and larger orbits around the Lagrangian point until it finally collided
with Earth about 4.533 Ga.[7][nb 1] Models reveal that when an impactor this size struck the
proto-Earth at a low angle and relatively low speed (8–20 km/sec), much material from the
mantles and crusts of the proto-Earth and the impactor was ejected into space, where much
of it stayed in orbit around the Earth. This material would eventually form the Moon.
However, the metallic cores of the impactor would have sunk through the Earth's mantle to
fuse with the Earth's core, depleting the Moon of metallic material.[20]The giant impact
hypothesis thus explains the Moon's abnormal composition.[21] The ejecta in orbit around the
Earth could have condensed into a single body within a couple of weeks. Under the
influence of its own gravity, the ejected material became a more spherical body: the Moon.
[22]

The radiometric ages show the Earth existed already for at least 10 million years before the
impact, enough time to allow for differentiation of the Earth's primitive mantle and core.
Then, when the impact occurred, only material from the mantle was ejected, leaving the
Earth's core of heavy siderophile elements untouched.

The impact had some important consequences for the young Earth. It released an
enormous amount of energy, causing both the Earth and Moon to be completely molten.
Immediately after the impact, the Earth's mantle was vigorously convecting, the surface was
a large magma ocean. The planet's first atmosphere must have been completely blown
away by the impact.[23] The impact is also thought to have changed Earth’s axis to produce
the large 23.5° axial tilt that is responsible for Earth’s seasons (a simple, ideal model of the
planets’ origins would have axial tilts of 0° with no recognizable seasons). It may also have
sped up Earth’s rotation.
Origin of the oceans and atmosphere
Because the Earth lacked an atmosphere immediately after the giant impact, cooling must have
occurred quickly. Within 150 million years, a solid crust with a basaltic composition must have
formed. The felsic continental crust of today did not yet exist. Within the Earth, further
differentiation could only begin when the mantle had at least partly solidified again. Nevertheless,
during the early Archaean (about 3.0 Ga) the mantle was still much hotter than today, probably
around 1600°C. This means the fraction of partially molten material was still much larger than
today.

Steam escaped from the crust, and more gases were released by volcanoes, completing the
second atmosphere. Additional water was imported by bolide collisions, probably from asteroids
ejected from the outer asteroid belt under the influence of Jupiter's gravity.

The large amount of water on Earth can never have been produced by volcanism and degassing
alone. It is assumed the water was derived from impacting comets that contained ice.[24]:130-
132
Though most comets are today in orbits farther away from the Sun than Neptune, computer
simulations show they were originally far more common in the inner parts of the solar system.
However, most of the water on Earth was probably derived from small impacting protoplanets,
objects comparable with today's small icy moons of the outer planets.[25] Impacts of these objects
can have enriched the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars) with water, carbon
dioxide, methane, ammonia,nitrogen and other volatiles. If all water on Earth was derived from
comets alone, millions of comet impacts would be required to support this theory. Computer
simulations illustrate that this is not an unreasonable number.[24]:131

As the planet cooled, clouds formed. Rain created the oceans. Recent evidence suggests
the oceans may have begun forming by 4.2 Ga,[26]or as early as 4.4 Ga.[4] In any event, by the
start of the Archaean eon the Earth was already covered with oceans. The new atmosphere
probably contained water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and smaller amounts of other gases.
[27]
As the output of the Sun was only 70% of the current amount, significant amounts
of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere most likely prevented the surface water from freezing.
[28]
Free oxygen would have been bound by hydrogen or minerals on the surface. Volcanic activity
was intense and, without an ozone layer to hinder its entry, ultraviolet radiation flooded the
surface.
"The moon, which has generally been thought to be devoid of hydrous materials, has water," says
John Eiler, the Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology and professor of geochemistry at Caltech,
and a coauthor on the paper.
"The fact that we were able to quantitatively measure significant amounts of water in a lunar
mineral is truly surprising," adds lead author Jeremy Boyce, a visitor in geochemistry at Caltech,
and a research scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The team found the water in a calcium phosphate mineral, apatite, within a basalt collected from
the moon's surface by the Apollo 14 astronauts.
To be precise, they didn't find "water" -- the molecule H2O. Rather, they found hydrogen in the
form of a hydroxyl anion, OH-, bound in the apatite mineral lattice.
"Hydroxide is a close chemical relative of water," explains coauthor George Rossman, Caltech's
Eleanor and John R. McMillan Professor of Mineralogy. "If you heat up the apatite, the hydroxyl
ions will 'decompose' and come out as water."
The lunar basalt sample in which the hydrogen was found had been collected by the Apollo 14
moon mission in 1971; the idea to focus the search for water on this particular sample was
promoted by Larry Taylor, a professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, who sent the
samples to the Caltech scientists last year.
"The moon has been considered to be bone dry ever since the return of the first Apollo rocks,"
Taylor notes. However, there are lunar volcanic deposits interpreted as having been erupted by
expanding vapor. Although carbon dioxide and sulfur gases have generally been thought to
dominate the expanding vapor, recent evidence from the study of the these deposits has
suggested that water could also play a role in powering lunar volcanic eruptions. The discovery of
hydroxyl in apatite from lunar volcanic rocks is consistent with this suggestion.
The idea of looking for water in lunar apatite isn't new, Boyce notes. "Charles B. Sclar and Jon F.
Bauer, geoscientists at Lehigh University, first noted that something was missing from the results
of chemical analyses of apatite in 1975," he says. "Now, 35 years later, we have quantitative
measurements -- and it turns out, they were right. The missing piece was OH."
The Caltech team analyzed the lunar apatite for hydrogen, sulfur, and chlorine using an ion
microprobe, which is capable of analyzing mineral grains with sizes much smaller than the width
of a human hair. This instrument fires a focused beam of high-energy ions at the sample surface,
sputtering away target atoms that are collected and then analyzed in a mass spectrometer. Ion
microprobe measurements demonstrated that in terms of its hydrogen, sulfur, and chlorine
contents, the lunar apatite in this sample is indistinguishable from apatites from terrestrial
volcanic rocks.
"We realized that the moon and the earth were able to make the same kind of apatite, relatively
rich in hydrogen, sulfur and chlorine," Boyce says.
Does that mean the moon is as awash in water as our planet? Almost certainly not, say the
scientists. In fact, the amount of water the moon must contain to be capable of generating
hydroxyl-rich apatite remains an open question. After all, it's hard to scale up the amount of water
found in the apatite -- 1600 parts per million or 0.16 percent by weight -- to determine just how
much water there is on the lunar landscape. The apatite that was studied is not abundant, and is
formed by processes that tend to concentrate hydrogen to much higher levels than are present in
its host rocks or the moon as a whole.
"There's more water on the moon than people suspected," says Eiler, "but there's still likely
orders of magnitude less than there is on the earth."
Nonetheless, the finding is significant for what it implies about our moon's composition and its
history. "These findings tell us that the geological processes on the moon are capable of creating
at least one hydrous mineral," Eiler says. "Recent spectroscopic observations of the moon
showed that hydrogen is present on its surface, maybe even as water ice. But that could be a thin
veneer, possibly hydrogen brought to the moon's surface by comets or solar wind. Our findings
show that hydrogen is also part of the rock record of the moon, and has been since early in its
history."
Beyond that, Eiler continues, "it's all a great big question mark. We don't know whether these
were igneous processes," -- in which rocks are formed by solidification of molten lava -- "or
metamorphic" -- in which minerals re-crystallize or change in change in chemistry without melting.
"They're both on the table as possible players."
In addition to Boyce, Eiler, Rossman, and Taylor, other authors on the Nature paper, "Lunar
apatite with terrestrial volatile abundances," include Research Assistant Professor Yang Liu from
the University of Tennessee in Knoxville; Edward Stolper, Caltech's William E. Leonhard
Professor of Geology, and Yunbin Guan, manager of Caltech's ion microprobe laboratory.
Their work was funded by grants from NASA's Cosmochemistry Program, the National Science
Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
The moon is the brightest light in the night sky. We've sent space missions there, people have
written countless songs and poems about it and now, astrophysicists are providing new insight on
how the Earth's moon was created and what makes it special.
"Well, the moon is certainly the most dramatic thing in the sky, so I'm sure people have had ideas
about where it came from the beginning," George Rieke, Ph.D., an astrophysicist at the University
of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz., told Ivanhoe.
Dr. Rieke says our moon is unique -- formed by a massive collision in space. "There was another
planet about the size of Mars that was on a disastrous orbit across the Earth's orbit and so the
Earth and this other planet ran into each other," he says.
It happened 30 to 50 million years after the formation of the sun. "It was a huge collision that
threw dust and debris out into space and some of that material somehow reassembled and
orbited around the Earth and eventually built up a moon," Dr. Rieke explained.
Now, an infrared detector like this one on NASA's Spitzer Telescope is giving University of
Arizona astrophysicists a wealth of new information from space. Researchers looked for evidence
of dust debris around 430-million-year-old stars. Surprisingly, only one star was surrounded by
dust, revealing that no other moon was formed like or since ours. "Nothing like that occurred
around any of the other planets in our solar system," Dr. Rieke said.
Scientists believe our moon set the stage for life on earth as we know it. But it could have been
very different. "It could have been, if the other planet was a little bit bigger that it would have just
destroyed the Earth and there wouldn't be any Earth left," Dr. Rieke explained.
You may never look at the moon quite the same way again. "We should be a lot more thankful
when we go out at night and find our way around through the full moonlight or just admire what it
looks like," Dr. Rieke said. Astrophysicists believe that moons like the Earth's form in only five to
ten percent of planetary systems in our universe.
THE FORMATION OF THE MOON: The Earth’s moon formed just 30 to 50 million years after the
sun was formed, when an object the size of Mars collided with Earth, and released a giant cloud
of dust along with the moon. After examining a cluster of about 500 stars with the Spitzer Space
Telescope, the researchers found very little evidence of collisions. If there had been such an
event, large amounts of dust would have remained in the solar system long after the creation of a
moon. The telescope would have indirectly observed pieces of dust that had absorbed light from
the star in their solar system and become warmer than the surroundings.
Discovering A New Earth 430 Light Years Away
Astronomers Spy Earth-like Planet Forming Around
Distant Star
It took billions of years and the perfect conditions for our Earth to grow and form. Now, those
same conditions can be seen in space, shaping a similar planet. Ivanhoe explains this exciting
space discovery.
Far, far away, something amazing is brewing in space. Swirling around a giant star similar to our
sun, astrophysicists have spotted the very early stages of a planet taking shape.
"What we think we're seeing is the actual formation of a planet -- terrestrial planet -- a rocky
planet like the Earth, around the star," Carey Lisse, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at Johns
Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., told Ivanhoe.
The Earth-like planet is about 430 light years away or 2.5x1015 miles from Earth. It's inside a huge
dust belt -- bigger than our asteroid belt -- with enough dusty material to build a planet. "The
material is forming at just the same distance, or close to the same distance where the Earth
formed from the sun," Dr. Lisse says.
To find the planet, astronomers used images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope. It looks
for infrared light or heat radiating from the dusty materials. The images also confirm the rocky
fragments forming the new planet are similar to materials found in the Earth's crust and core.
"So, the body that's going to form -- the planet that's going to form -- isn't going to be this gas
giant with incredibly thick atmosphere," explains Dr. Lisse. It's going to be a rocky planet like
Mars or Venus or the Earth."
There's also an outer ice belt circling the young planet, making it more likely that water could
reach the new planet's surface … and maybe even life; but don't wait around for signs of life. The
planet still needs another 100 million years before it's completely formed.
Astronomers say the star the new planet is spinning around is between ten and 16 million years
old, which is the perfect age for forming Earth-like planets.

Astronomers have theorized that the planet Earth and the Moon were
created as the result of a giant collision between two planets the size of
Mars and Venus. Until now, the collision was thought to have happened
when the solar system was 30 million years old, or approximately 4,537
million years ago. But new research shows that Earth and the Moon
must have formed much later -- perhaps up to 150 million years after
the formation of the solar system.

Turbulent collisions
The planets in the solar system are thought to have been created by collisions between small
dwarf planets orbiting the newborn Sun. In the collisions, the small planets melted together and
formed larger and larger planets. Earth and the Moon are believed to be the result of a gigantic
collision between two planets the size of Mars and Venus. The two planets collided at a time
when both had a core of metal (iron) and a surrounding mantle of silicates (rock). But when did it
happen and how did it happen? The collision took place in less than 24 hours and the
temperature of the Earth was so high (7000º C), that both rock and metal must have melted in the
turbulent collision. But were the stone mass and iron mass also mixed together?
Until recently it was believed that the rock and iron mixed completely during the planet formation
and so the conclusion was that the Moon was formed when the solar system was 30 million years
old or approximately 4,537 million years ago. But new research shows something completely
different.