giant impact

Scientists have been puzzled for years by strange gas floating around a star, which is only explained after a collision between planets, similar to the one that formed our Moon. The star HD 172555, 95 light-years from us, has been a question mark among astronomers for years due to the unusual composition of its stardust. It contains large amounts of unusual minerals, with much finer grains than scientists might expect in a typical space debris disk. Now, an international team led by researchers from MIT, the National University of Ireland Galway, and the University of Cambridge may have found the answer: a colossal impact between a rocky, Earth-sized planet and a somewhat smaller one, like the one below. suffered our world and from whose result the Moon was formed, and that displaced its atmosphere. The conclusions have just been published in the journal ‘ Nature ‘.