"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 ...

The formation of the Moon may have come harder on the heels of Earth's birth than we thought. According to a new analysis by researchers from the US, France, and Germany, Earth's constant companion ...

Discover how scientists have used iron isotopes to determine the likely origin of the Mars-sized planet named Theia.

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 ...

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 ...

Conventionally, the moon is thought to have formed during one big impact, but a three-impact model might make more sense ...

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 ...

A groundbreaking study in Nature has shaken up our understanding of the moon’s formation. This research suggests that the moon was born during Earth’s earliest days, revolutionizing the timeline of ...

The largest and oldest crater on the moon did not form as we initially suspected, a new study suggests. The findings hint that a specific region of the lunar surface could be more scientifically ...

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