New stuff from my shop...

....not the home shop, but the one at work. Who would have thunk it?

NPR podcast

NPR story

 

Hehehe....besides breaking all sorts of NASA rules and a few laws, they would be so small that you'd never see them. They're about this big --> .

Not only that, but if you consider the cost of the Apollo missions and translate that into a cost-per-bead, I think they'd be very expensive.

 

[caveat]
The only "giant impact" of this kind that has ever been observed through a telescope was the 8 (or so) pieces of comet Shoemaker-Levy that crashed into Jupiter a few years ago....not exactly analogous to the supposed moon-forming event for the Earth. So this giant impact theory is exactly that....a theory....but a theory that has been shown to be extremely likely (statistically speaking) during solar system formation....so likely that it is probable that all the inner planets experienced at least one, and probably more than one, before reaching their present masses. The giant impact is also really the only viable theory that can explain the angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system. It has been the subject of some pretty fancy computer simulations. Many of these simulations are very high-quality, but because of CPU limitations they all make simplifying assumptions about some key parts of the physics involved. Having said all that....
[/caveat]

A "cool" giant impact, one which does not completely melt the Moon, is one very likely scenario. All the simulations done to date suggest very high temperatures during and immediately after the impact, but I'm not sure that all the variables have been fleshed out fully (impact direction, angle, velocity, relative impactor masses, etc), and none of these simulations have been done with an atmosphere for the Earth.

One problem with a "cool" giant impact is that the Moon's crust is full of the kinds of minerals (feldspar mainly) that float on a magma ocean, which has long been taken as supporting evidence for a high-energy giant impact. But this doesn't necessarily mean the ENTIRE Moon was once molten.