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 ...

The story of how the Moon came to be has always carried a touch of mystery. Picture the young Solar System as a restless place where new worlds grew from swirling gas, dust, and rock. In that chaotic ...

One bright day on Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, everything changed. A massive object slammed into the young planet. The impact was so large that bits were flung out into space, eventually ...

A half century after NASA's Apollo 17 lunar module lifted off the moon's northeastern near side quadrant, planetary scientists still don't completely understand when or how our moon first formed. They ...

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 ...

"The most convincing scenario is that most of the building blocks of Earth and Theia originated in the inner solar system.

New research suggests that Theia, the object whose collision with Earth is theorized to have caused the formation of the moon, came from closer to the sun. Artist’s impression of the collision between ...

Crystals hidden in Australia’s oldest rocks have revealed new clues about how Earth and the Moon formed. The study suggests Earth’s continents didn’t begin growing until hundreds of millions of years ...

Multiple impacts on Earth might better explain our moon’s origin than a single giant impact 4.5 billion years ago – and could help solve one of its biggest mysteries. But Earth and the moon are ...