Origin of the Moon in a giant impact near the end of the Earth's formation

Abstract

The Moon is generally believed to have formed from debris ejected by a large off-centre collision with the early Earth^1,2. The impact orientation and size are constrained by the angular momentum contained in both the Earth's spin and the Moon's orbit, a quantity that has been nearly conserved over the past 4.5 billion years. Simulations of potential moon-forming impacts now achieve resolutions sufficient to study the production of bound debris. However, identifying impacts capable of yielding the Earth–Moon system has proved difficult^3,4,5,6. Previous works^4,5 found that forming the Moon with an appropriate impact angular momentum required the impact to occur when the Earth was only about half formed, a more restrictive and problematic model than that originally envisaged. Here we report a class of impacts that yield an iron-poor Moon, as well as the current masses and angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system. This class of impacts involves a smaller—and thus more likely—object than previously considered viable, and suggests that the Moon formed near the very end of Earth's accumulation.