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About 4.5 billion years ago
- Several theories about our Moon’s formation vie for dominance, but almost all share that point in common: near the time of the solar system’s formation, about 4.5 billion years ago, something ― perhaps a single object the size of Mars, perhaps a series of objects ― crashed into the young Earth and flung enough molten and vaporized debris into space to create the Moon.
science.nasa.gov/moon/formation/
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Did the Moon come from a planet?
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Where do lunar meteorites come from?
The origin of the Moon is usually explained by a Mars-sized body striking the Earth, creating a debris ring that eventually collected into a single natural satellite, the Moon, but there are a number of variations on this giant-impact hypothesis, as well as alternative explanations, and research continues into how the Moon came to be formed.
- What Did The Early Earth Look like?
- What Did The Early Moon Look like?
- What Questions Remain?
After the moon-forming impact, Earth was a very different planet from the world we see today! Where the present-day Earth has oceans covering much of its surface, the early Earth was covered in a magma ocean- a layer of molten rock hundreds of miles deep that was melted by the energy released during the collision. Any water present would only exist...
Most of us picture the moon as a desolate, grey place with craters and not much else, but it was surprisingly geologically active for much of its history. Like the Earth, the moon started off with a thick layer of molten rock on its surface. Unlike the Earth, though, the moon’s surface did not cool to form tectonic plates. Instead, it has a thick c...
Although scientists agree that the moon formed because of an impact, the details of the impact are still up for debate. Scientists still don’t agree on how big the impacting object was, how fast it was travelling, what it was made from, or even whether we should be calling it “Theia." Some scientists even argue that multiple impacts might have form...
Earth’s Moon is thought to have formed in a tremendous collision. A massive object ― named Theia after the mythological Greek Titan who was the mother of Selene, goddess of the Moon ― smashed into Earth, flinging material into space that became the Moon.
Museum planetary science researcher Prof Sara Russell explains the origins of Earth's closest companion. Analysis of samples brought back from the NASA Apollo missions suggest that the Earth and Moon are a result of a giant impact between an early proto-planet and an astronomical body called Theia.
The importance of lunar rocks. The great scientists who uncovered the origin of the Moon. 1952 –Harold Urey publishes the first serious arguments that the Moon may have originated elsewhere in the Solar System and been captured into orbit around Earth at a later stage.
Dec 13, 2022 · Where did our Moon come from? Well, actually, there have been several theories over many decades. Earlier versions of lunar formation theories included capture, where the Moon would have been a strayed planetoid.
For Laplace, the most obvious explanation for the Moon was that it must have formed alongside Earth (a process known as binary accretion) and been a constant companion since the earliest days of our planet’s history. But even Laplace could see that the Moon’s huge size presented a problem.
