A Violent Splash of Magma That May Have Made the Moon

A study published on Monday in Nature Geoscience suggests that the moon was forged from the fires of an ocean of magma sloshing over baby Earth’s surface. Scientists suspect that this was likely the result of a giant impactor the size of Mars, known as Theia, that slammed into a young Earth and sent into orbit a spiral of material that coalesced into the moon. Such an impact on a relatively solid Earth would have created a moon made mostly out of Theia, not Earth (at least in simulations resulting in the Earth-moon system we observe today, complete with our 24-hour days).

Source: www.nytimes.com