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| Fig.1. An artist’s concept of two celestial bodies the size of Mercury (left) and the Moon (right) colliding (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, 2009) |
Long before an asteroid hit Earth, killing off all non-avian dinosaurs, a much larger object crashed into our planet. This object, called Theia, is thought to have collided with proto-Earth around 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists think that a glancing blow shaped our early planet and created the Moon out of Theia’s remains. A recent article published in Science, however, may overturn this hypothesis regarding the formation of the Moon.
