Wikipedia has a nice image: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_low-shear-velocity_provinces" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_low-shear-velocity_provi...</a>
Why did the moon coalesce? Why is there not a ring of debris around earth? That seems like the most likely outcome of an impact that violent.<p>I'm not an astrophysicist. Just wondering.
For most meteor impacts, the meteor itself completely vaporizes and doesn't deposit any solid chunks into the target. This is why moon craters are almost always circular despite the impacts occurring at all angles of incidence.<p>It seems the implication here is that the limit where the masses are comparable plays out very differently. Seems like it should be possible to estimate the hypothetical collion energy from the size of intact chunks.