A violent, head-on collision” created Earth as we know it, ground-breaking new research has revealed.
A planetary embryo called Theia, thought to be around the size of Mars or Earth, collided with Earth 4.5 billion years ago when our planet was just 100 million years old.
It was already known that Theia and Earth collided, but the new evidence from the UCLA-led scientific team shows it was less of a side swipe, as previously thought, and more of a “head-on assault”.
The force of the impact resulted in early Earth and Theia, together to form a single planet, with a piece breaking off and entering its gravitational pull to form the moon. Researchers studied moon rocks from three Apollo missions and compared them with volcanic rocks found in Hawaii and Arizona......................................
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