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Artist's depiction of a collision between two planetary bodies. Such an impact between Earth and a Mars-sized object likely formed the Moon.. The giant-impact hypothesis, sometimes called the Theia Impact, is an astrogeology hypothesis for the formation of the Moon first proposed in 1946 by Canadian geologist Reginald Daly.
Animation of collision between Earth (blue) and Theia (black), forming the Moon (red and gray). Bodies are not to scale. According to the giant impact hypothesis, Theia orbited the Sun, nearly along the orbit of the proto-Earth, by staying close to one or the other of the Sun-Earth system's two more stable Lagrangian points (i.e., either L 4 or ...
The Moon's heavily cratered far-side. The origin of the Moon is usually explained by a Mars-sized body striking the Earth, creating a debris ring that eventually collected into a single natural satellite, the Moon, but there are a number of variations on this giant-impact hypothesis, as well as alternative explanations, and research continues into how the Moon came to be formed.
Theia, an ancient planet, collided with Earth to form the moon, scientists believe. A new study suggests Theia could have also formed mysterious blobs called large low-velocity provinces, or LLVPs.
The moon’s gravity slightly bent Juice’s path so it received a much larger gravity assist from Earth. The flyby of Earth reduced Juice’s speed by 10,737 miles per hour (4.8 kilometers per ...
Artist's depiction of a collision between two planetary bodies. Such an impact between the Earth and a Mars-sized object likely formed the Moon. In the early history of the Earth (about four billion years ago), bolide impacts were almost certainly common since the Solar System contained far more discrete bodies than at present.
The Earth and Moon are very likely destroyed by falling into the Sun, just before the Sun reaches the top of its red giant phase. [114] [note 3] Before the final collision, the Moon possibly spirals below Earth's Roche limit, breaking into a ring of debris, most of which falls to the Earth's surface. [116]
On 8 January, it came within 7.6 million miles of Earth, roughly 32 times the average distance between Earth and the Moon. The next time it will pass this close again will be in 2087.