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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Scientists have long believed that the Moon was formed by a massive object crashing into the Earth billions of years ago and sending chunks hurtling into space that ultimately coalesced. But what was ...

Without the Moon, Earth’s geology, biology, and climate — as well as human philosophy — would be different in many significant ways. If Earth had no Moon, the postulated origin of the Moon through a ...

When the Moon first formed, it was a sea of molten lava. The immense gravity of Earth stretched this molten sea, raising tides on both the near and far sides. But the Moon was spinning, and that ...

4.5 billion years ago was an interesting time for Earth. The atmosphere was thick and what we would now think of as toxic. The moon, which was freshly formed, looks much more massive than it does ...