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Comment by purpleblue | Hacker News Reader

The idea that something collided with the Earth and created the Moon is an unscientific, absurd idea. There is a zero percent chance that a collision as described could result in the Moon maintaining an almost perfect orbit around the Earth, and the Earth maintaining a near perfect orbit around the Sun.

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> There is a zero percent chance that a collision as described could result in the Moon maintaining an almost perfect orbit around the Earth, and the Earth maintaining a near perfect orbit around the Sun.

I’d love to see the math you did to come to that conclusion. Do you have it in a paper somewhere?

So all the planets popped into existence with their current Mass and Orbits?

Of course not. Mass is summed as is momentum

Everything was formed by the spinning of gas clouds and consolidating into planets and such. That's why the planets haven't fallen into the Sun after 14 billion years.

indeed, and how is that proof that the moon didn't come from a collision with the earth?

Which is why nothing has ever collided in the history of the solar system, because they all started on perfectly parallel orbits? Is that about right?

Nothing large enough to cause a planet to split into two ever collided. Yes.

Really. Interesting. What do you think was the cutoff size for objects that can collide? Can you justify it quantitatively, given your "zero percent chance" line earlier?

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