"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 ...

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 ...

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

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 ...

It’s one of the most enduring ideas about the formation of our solar system: Earth collided with a Mars-sized object, Theia, and the debris from this cosmic crash eventually became the moon. But a new ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The conventional explanation for the moon's formation is that an enormous rock smashed into the nascent Earth and created it as a result. A new theory challenges the particulars of how events may have ...

That’s also true for the other moons that provide the gravitational stress. As a result, the internal oceans may actually ...