The Earth may have lost as much as 60 per cent of its atmosphere in a collision with another young planet that created the Moon, a new study revealed. Their findings have led to the development of a new way to predict the atmospheric loss from any collision across a wide range of rocky planet impacts. These could be used by scientists investigating the Moon's origins or other giant impacts both in our own solar system and on rocky exoplanets light years away. The simulations can't directly say how the Moon came to be, but they could show the effects a giant collision had on the Earth's atmosphere. Simulations revealed Earth could have lost anywhere between 10-60 per cent of its atmosphere in the collision where the Moon came into existence.

Source: Daily Mail September 29, 2020 23:03 UTC