"During the early solar system's game of cosmic billiards, Earth was struck by a neighbor,” said Dauphas. “It was a lucky shot. Without the moon's steadying influence on our planet's tilt, the climate ...

About 4.5 billion years ago, a colossal impact between the young Earth and a mysterious planetary body called Theia changed everything—reshaping Earth, forming the Moon, and scattering clues across ...

A crucial difference in the “fingerprints” of Earth and the moon confirms an explosive, interconnected past Within the first 150 million years after our solar system formed, a giant body roughly the ...

According to researchers, the composition of a planet or celestial body holds the entire story of its formation and origin.

Scientists have gone back and forth about explanations for the moon's formation for decades, with the general consensus being that it formed during some type of cosmic collision between Earth and a ...

Eons ago, in the frigid depths of our solar system, a dramatic collision occurred between two icy worlds. Instead of a catastrophic smash-up, the two bodies "kissed," merging temporarily like a ...

To our best of our understanding, the Moon formed from Earth following a colossal impact. A Mars-sized world we nicknamed Theia slammed and merged with the primordial Earth, throwing material into ...

Billions of years ago, so the theory goes, something around the size of Mars smacked into Earth, spewing a whole bunch of dirt into space that eventually coalesced to form the Moon. This is called the ...

Apollo samples provide evidence: Researchers analyzed Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo missions and, for the first time, ...

Astronomers have taken a step towards understanding how the Moon might have formed out of a giant collision between the early Earth and another massive object 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists led by ...

The Moon's formation may not just have smashed Earth -- it may have stretched our planet into a potato for millions of years afterwards. Share on Facebook (opens in a new window) Share on X (opens in ...