Science
A new study has shown that the Earth was the result of a strong direct collision.
The planet Theia is about the size of Mars or Earth collided with Earth 4.5 billion years ago when our planet was only 100 million years old.
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The force of the impact caused early Earth and Theia to merge together into a single planet, a piece of which split off and formed into the Moon, which was ejected into orbit.
The origin of the Earth
The researchers studied moon rocks from three Apollo missions and compared them to volcanic rocks found in Hawaii and Arizona.
To their surprise, they found no difference in oxygen isotopes and came to the conclusion that rocks from the Moon and Earth had the same chemical characteristics.
Study author Edward Young from the University of California said that Theia merged with the Earth and the Moon, evenly distributed.
This is how the Moon formed:
Theia was growing up and was meant to be a planet before she collided.
Scientists also raised a number of questions about the origin of the Earth in their study. For example, it remains to be seen whether the impact caused all of Earth's water to disappear before asteroids containing water hit our planet tens of thousands of millions of years ago.