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Record W4416262594 · doi:10.1007/s11631-025-00834-2

Explosive lunar fission above a large low-velocity province

2025· article· en· W4416262594 on OpenAlexaff
Matthew R. Edwards

Bibliographic record

VenueActa Geochimica · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldPhysics and Astronomy
TopicPlanetary Science and Exploration
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMantle (geology)BreakupMantle plumePlumeCore–mantle boundaryPlate tectonicsFission

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract The giant impact hypothesis for the Moon’s origin has had difficulty explaining the nearly identical isotopic compositions of Moon rocks and rocks from Earth’s silicate mantle and crust. These similarities are instead more compatible with the Darwin-Wise hypothesis that the Moon arose by fission of a rapidly spinning Earth. To overcome problems with the fission model concerning structural stability and angular momentum conservation, some authors suggested that lunar fission was feasible on a more slowly rotating Earth if assisted by a nuclear explosion near the core-mantle boundary. In this light we consider the possible roles of the large low-velocity provinces (LLVPs). These long-lived structures have been implicated in diverse geophysical processes ranging from deep mantle plumes to continental breakup and mass extinction events. While the LLVPs have been seen as possible remnants of the giant impactor, we propose that one of them was the site of lunar ejection. Internal heating of the liquid core is suggested to have given rise to an equatorial belt just under the core-mantle boundary analogous to the one recently detected by Ma and Tkalčić [Sci Adv 10(35):eadn5562, 2024]. Upwellings of heat and volatiles from this belt then generated two antipodal, equatorial bulges: the precursors of the Pacific and African LLVPs. Prior to the emergence of plate tectonics, core heat was mainly dissipated by networks of deep mantle plumes extending above the proto-LLVPs. These plume networks represent conduits of weakened mantle through which proto-lunar materials could later rise in a focused ejection. Continuing heat buildup in the core eventually triggered a cataclysmic explosion in the Pacific proto-LLVP, possibly analogous to a planetary-scale kimberlite eruption. This explosion launched LLVP and overlying mantle material into a low Earth orbit, where it coalesced to form the Moon. Some possible sources of additional energy to power the explosion are considered, including nuclear fission, bolide impacts and a hypothetical gravitational decay process culminating in a ‘Ʌ event’.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: Not applicable
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.078
Threshold uncertainty score0.424

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.006
GPT teacher head0.224
Teacher spread0.218 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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