Ancient Crashes Blasted Precious Metals Into Earth, Moon and
Mars Artist's conception of the massive collision between Earth
and a Mars-size object that likely created the moon about 4.5
billion years ago. CREDIT: AOES Medialab, ESA Gigantic
collisions on Earth, the moon and Mars 4.5 billion years ago
injected precious elements such as gold and platinum into the
developing worlds, a new study suggests. In the last days of
planet formation, a body as big as Pluto likely slammed into
Earth after the planet had been clobbered by a Mars-size object,
researchers said. Mars and the moon absorbed smaller but still
devastating blows, they added. These traumatic cosmic crashes
may have knocked Earth off its axis by 10 degrees. But they also
delivered gold and other elements into the bodies' upper
reaches, and possibly brought huge amounts of water to the moon,
researchers said. "We can use this information to tell us about
the last great growth spurt of the Earth, moon and Mars," said
study leader Bill Bottke of the S