OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
The Moon, ever present in the sky, has many origin myths. In 1879 Sir George Howard Darwin proposed that the Moon was spun-out of the Earth’s Pacific Ocean basin, whilst other theories suggested it was a captured celestial body. Our modern understanding of its formation was dramatically changed by the Apollo missions which brought back samples that were, chemically speaking, almost identical to Earth rocks. How a chunk of the Earth came to be thrown into space has been the subject of robust scientific debate over the last fifty years. This talk explores the current Lunar origin theories, underpinned by computer simulations developed to design safer cars, which reveal that the old formation ideas may indeed be closer to the truth.
