Alternative hypotheses for making the Moon
DOI: 10.1063/PT.3.2733
Stevenson replies: I thank these letter writers for their alternative suggestions. Actually, neither is really new, and my failure to mention them—or others—is not because I was unaware of their existence, but rather because of the major challenges that these alternatives must overcome. In the Lagrange point scenario , which is widely known in the community, the challenge is to devise a story in which such bodies naturally arise in the context of a model that explains the planetary system, not just Earth–Moon. It is not sufficient to postulate them. A new paper 1 might suggest that the similarity of the impacting body and target is not so unreasonable. In the more astonishing fission story , the challenge lies in the basic physics of the proposed process, which is questionable.
References
1. A. Mastrobuono-Battisti, H. B. Perets, S. N. Raymond, arXiv:1502.07346 .
More about the Authors
David Stevenson. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
