A fact that turns perceptions upside down

Once upon a time, mankind could only look up to the vastness of the stars, but with the continuous development of modern technology, the original inaccessible starry sky has become within reach, and even free to wander in it, the negative distance to feel the vast beauty of the universe, as well as their own small and humble.

On July 16, 1969, the Saturn V launch vehicle with Apollo XI slowly lifted off, marking a new stage in the development of human spaceflight.

Four days later (July 20), the Eagle lunar module slowly landed on the barren surface of the moon, from which Armstrong stepped out and took the first step toward man's conquest of the universe.

There are already Earth creatures "landed" on the moon before humans

Today, although mankind has not set foot on the moon again for more than 40 years, but our understanding and exploration of the moon does not end there, but is more and more in-depth because every year many probes are sent to the moon's surface, or lunar orbit.

And in the ongoing study of the Moon, scientists have discovered a perception-bending fact: Earth creatures may have landed on the Moon before humans did. What happened?

The controversy over the origin of the Moon

Many people may not know that although humans have been studying the moon for many years, its origin is still very controversial.

Earlier, there are four origin theories together "ruling" the academic community, they are capture theory, split theory, twin theory, and impact theory.

Capture theory

Before 1980, the capture theory was the dominant theory of the origin of the Moon. It is believed that the Moon was originally a wandering body in the solar system, and was captured by the Earth's gravity as it passed near the Earth, thus becoming a satellite of the Earth.

However, the main reason why this theory did not become mainstream later was that it could not explain the mechanism of capture, which usually results in an impact. In addition, it does not explain the fact that the Moon and the Earth have the same oxygen isotope ratio.

Fission theory

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In the 19th century, Charles Darwin, Darwin's son, proposed the splitting theory, which states that the Moon was originally part of the Earth, and that the rapid rotation of the early Earth caused some of its mass to be thrown off, and that this thrown-off part formed the Moon.

In this hypothesis, the Pacific Ocean today is a trace of the Earth's ejected material, but the age of the Pacific Ocean crust is only about 200 million years old, which does not match the billions of years of the Moon's history, so this hypothesis is nearly discarded today.

Twin Theory

This hypothesis suggests that the Moon and the Earth originated in the same accretion disk in the primordial solar system, which means that they are twins. But this hypothesis has no way to explain the angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system and why the Moon has a smaller iron core relative to the Earth.

Impact Theory

Compared with the above three hypotheses, the collision theory has less difficulty in self-consistency, so it has received more recognition and support and is therefore the most mainstream lunar origin theory at present.

According to the collision theory, shortly after the formation of the solar system, when the Earth was still molten, a Mars-sized protoplanet "Theia" impacted the Earth, causing the Earth to throw out a large amount of material, which reorganized and fused in the early Earth orbit, and finally formed a single solid - the Moon. -the Moon.

Creatures that landed on the moon before humans did

The moon was formed by an impact billions of years ago, and in a time of strong scientific popularization, no one should be unaware that a stunning impact also occurred 65 million years ago.

In this impact, dinosaurs were among the absolute protagonists, and it is also the protagonist of this article today because the Earth creatures that preceded humans on the moon were none other than dinosaurs.

But the question also comes, how did the dinosaurs get rid of the Earth's gravity and cross the distance of 380,000 kilometers to reach the moon? Did they also give birth to civilization and develop technology?

According to the much fossil evidence found so far, the appearance of dinosaurs can be traced back to the Triassic period, 230 million years ago. In the following 160 million years, dinosaurs can be said to have been "ruling" the Earth's food chain, they are then deservedly dominant.

The human race has developed a technological civilization in just millions of years, so whether the dinosaurs that dominated the earth for 160 million years had also established a glorious dinosaur civilization?

In fact, in the dinosaur family, there are many intelligent dinosaurs like Velociraptors, but almost no natural enemies, they did not evolve intelligent power, not to mention that intelligence is not the only direction of evolution to survive, so until the extinction of the dinosaurs is still hair-drinking beasts, they did not build a civilization in the long years.

Since they did not build a technological civilization, how did they leave Earth and reach the moon? The answer is - "hitchhiking".

65 million years ago, an asteroid more than 10 kilometers in diameter hit the Earth, creating a crater more than 150 kilometers in diameter and 20 kilometers deep.

In this shocking change, unprecedented climatic catastrophes appeared one after another, and at least three-quarters of species completely disappeared from history, and this includes dinosaurs.

According to the scientists' estimation, at that time, the Hixulub meteorite hit the earth at a speed of at least 20~40 kilometers per second, and the strong shock wave generated at the moment of impact lifted everything around, including the dinosaurs living near the impact point.

We all know that the escape velocity of the Earth is about 11.2 km / s. As long as the object reaches this speed, it will be able to break away from the Earth's gravitational bondage.

After the impact, by the impact of the shock wave, many things around the Earth reached escape velocity, they are in high speed added out of the atmosphere, some dinosaurs may therefore fly out of the Earth, so the shock wave is their "ride".

Of course, in such a violent impact, dinosaurs can not remain intact and still alive, which means that out of the atmosphere will only be their remains.

After a certain period, these remains will most likely be pulled back into the atmosphere by the Earth's gravity and eventually burned up, while there may also be a chance of crashing into the moon or even drifting to Mars or further afield.

So from this perspective, dinosaurs may have set foot on this barren land long before humans landed on the moon, even if only their remains.

Visitors from Mars - "ALH84001"

Scientists have long been prepared for the possibility of finding fossilized Earth creatures on the Moon, because the "ALH84001" meteorite found at the South Pole on December 27, 1984, is the best example.

According to astronomers' speculation, the "ALH84001" meteorite was formed 4.5 billion years ago and suffered a violent impact 3.9-4 billion years ago, but at this time it is still located on the surface of Mars.

It was separated from Mars by an unexplained impact 150 million years ago and flew through the universe for thousands of years before being captured by Earth's gravity 130 million years ago and eventually crashing in the South Pole region of Earth.

Scientists have detected some special traces on "ALH84001", and these traces are most likely fossils of nanoscale life (similar to bacteria).

If these traces are determined to be some kind of fossilized life, then not only does it mean that life is far more common in the universe than we think and that life existed on ancient Mars, but it also raises a question worth pondering: could the origin of life on Earth be related to a similar meteorite?