A new simulation puts forth a different theory -- the Moon may have formed immediately, in a matter of hours, when material from the Earth and Theia was launched directly into orbit after the impact.

How did Earth, alone among the solar system's rocky planets, become the home for life? How, among all this frigid ...

Seismic imaging has revealed two colossal regions deep within Earth’s mantle that could reshape our understanding of the ...

How did Earth, alone among the Solar System's rocky planets, become the home for life? How, among all this frigid ...

Conducted by researchers from Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology, the simulation suggests Earth’s collision with Theia 4.5 billion years ago may not have been the cause of ...

Billions of years ago, a version of our Earth that looks very different than the one we live on today was hit by an object about the size of Mars, called Theia – and out of that collision the ...

This new simulation posits that an object the size of Mars may have collided with the Earth of that time, creating what would later become our Moon. The object in question is called Theia. This ...

Bob McDonald's blog: Researchers at NASA and in the UK developed the highest resolution simulation of the collision between a hypothetical rogue planet dubbed Theia and a primitive Earth that is ...

Older simulations used hundreds of thousands or millions of "particles"—you can think of these as idealized digital stand-ins for chunks of Earth and Theia, each following the laws of physics in the ...

The simulations show that the upper and lower mantles have different compositions and states after the collision. The lower mantle is mostly solid and with little contamination from Theia; roughly ...

Relics of an ancient planet might be hiding under our feet, according to new research. Some scientists believe that a “protoplanet” named Theia collided with Earth some 4.5 billion years ago.

Most theories claim the Moon formed out of the debris of this collision, coalescing in orbit over months or years. A new simulation puts forth a different theory – the Moon may have formed immediately ...