Why Does Earth Only Have One Moon? page all

KOMPAS.com – Moon, which is also called natural satelliteare generally solid objects and only a few have an atmosphere.

Most of the planet’s moons probably formed from the disk of gas and dust that circulated around the planet in the early solar system.

Collect NASA, There are hundreds of moons in the solar system. In fact, some asteroids have been found to have small moons.

Starting from rocky planets in the inner solar system, such as Mercury and Venus which have no satellites at all, Earth has one, and Mars has two small moons.

Then, beyond the solar system, the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune have dozens of moons.

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Reported from Astronomy Department Cornell University, There are two types of planets in the solar system, namely the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) and the Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune).

While the Jovian planets have a number of moons approaching 90, the Terrestrial planets only have 3.

Apparently, this big difference is related to the formation of the solar system.

The solar system formed from a giant swirling cloud of gas, which collapsed under its own gravity.

During this collapse, the gas heats up and begins to rotate more rapidly at a regular rate.

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This led to the formation of a protoplanetary disk, a rotating disk of hot gas with mass concentrated at its center.

This central concentration became the Sun and the planets formed from the remaining disk.

The gas in the protoplanetary disk cannot collapse on its own to form planets.

It takes some ‘seed’ that can be pulled by gravity to form a planet.

The diversity on the planets is related to the types of ‘seeds’ available in different parts of the protoplanetary disk.

Near the Sun, the temperature is so high that all matter is gas and cannot form planets.

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A little further from the Sun, there are shards of metal and small pieces of rock.

These flakes then stick together when they collide and form planetesimals.

The size of the planetesimals grew rapidly until they became so large that collisions began to break them apart. Only the largest survive to become Terrestrial planets.

Outside the orbit of Mars, the temperature is low enough that there are not only pieces of metal and chunks of rock, but also lots of small chunks of ice.

Therefore, there are more ‘seeds’ to form planets. This caused the planetesimals to grow rapidly and become large enough that their gravity could trap the hydrogen and helium that were so abundant in the protoplanetary disk.

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Protoplanets captured so much gas that they became ‘little solar systems’.

In essence, the same heating, spinning, and flattening occurred, resulting in the formation of many ice satellites around the Jovian planets.

This can explain most of the moons around the Jovian planets.

However, the Jovian planets have several other moons which are planetesimal remnants captured by the planets.

As for Earth’s Moon, it is assumed that it was formed from the collision of a large planetesimal with Earth.

This collision ejects a large amount of material into Earth’s orbit which contracts to form Earth’s natural satellite, the Moon.

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