Imagine the crash.
This week Rebeca went for a walk in the morning, when she arrived at Miramar beach she sent me a photo, it was noticeable how transparent the water was, which is uncommon in Winter. When I returned home I told her about it, but what caught her attention was the low tide.
So today, while I was running, when I reached the Miramar breakwater I looked at what level the sea was, the truth is I didn't see that it was either very low or very high, but I started thinking, not about the tides but their main cause, the Moon.
For me it is something that I have always tried to imagine, about 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was in formation, everything was relaxed, and the planets were just beginning to form. These protoplanets were in unstable orbits and many collided with each other. The solar system was in this relaxation when a protoplanet of about 11,100 km in diameter collided with another of about 6,800 km. IMAGINE THE CRASH!
The result was two new bodies, different from the ones that collided. Both materials were mixed; Most of the heavy materials formed were gathered in the larger one, and the lighter ones in the other, obviously with a lot of mixing. Thus a binary system was formed, with the two new planets rotating around a common center of mass. The largest with a diameter about 4 times larger than the smallest. This binary system is the Earth and the Moon. Of the planets in the solar system, the one with the largest satellite, compared to its size, is the Earth, without a doubt.
Obviously, the Moon has always had a great influence on what happens on Earth, the best example is the tides, responsible for a great interaction between marine and continental systems. But if you consider that the moon has been gradually moving away from the Earth, this effect must have been much greater billions of years ago.
Now think, the Earth at that time received a large amount of materials from outside, the solar system was still very unstable and many objects were spinning around everywhere. So all those materials, plus those that were already on land, in the seas that had high temperatures, in addition to the contributions of energy, and other materials, from the volcanoes since there was great geological activity. Add the thunder due to the intense atmospheric activity. All this made the chemical interaction of the existing components much more intense. A VERY GOOD BROTH.
Well, life was cooked in this broth. What is life?
Let's leave that for another time.
At some point, structures began to appear that were capable of self-replication and with it what we call life. We always thought that this occurred in the sea, but on continental surfaces, many interactions surely occurred that gave rise to compounds that would be more difficult to form in a liquid medium. Some of these compounds could have been incorporated into the bugs. Thanks to the attraction of the moon there are tides, and these cause a lot of interaction on the borders between dry and aquatic environments. This meant that compounds from both environments could mix and travel with the tides from one place to another, which caused a lot of interaction in this intertidal zone. I believe that thanks to the moon the intertidal zone must have played a very important role in these processes that allowed the appearance of life. I wouldn't be surprised if life originated in this zone. So without the moon, we wouldn't be here.
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