Annette Cheney Rm.14 A November 10, 2000
Writing: Research Paper
Our Moon's History & Features
Our moon is the closet heavenly body to our Earth. There are many different theories on how it formed and started.
Many years ago, Sir George Darwin thought that when the earth was being born and was still hot and fluid, it spun so fast that it eventually threw off a piece of itself which cooled into the moon. Another related to that one is that the Pacific Ocean is the place where the piece of rock flew off to form the moon and that’s why it's so big and hollow. Another similar to those is that the earth spun so fast, it threw off particles of rocks which condensed into the moon which also explains how rock samples say earth and moon were formed at the same time. The more recent and more probable theories are that the earth heated the thick cloud of dust that surrounded it and that transformed dust cooled and condensed to form the moon. This last theory is the more probable one. It says that the moon was formed in a different part of the Solar System and that the moon's orbit brought it close enough to the Earth to be captured by its gravity and so it became our earth's satellite, which explains its completely different composition from the Earth's. The first manned spacecrafts sent to orbit the moon was made by Apollo 8. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 reached the moon and Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.
