So how did our planet end up with such a special moon? The answer is that, surprisingly enough, the moon is a piece of our ...

The accretion hypothesis proposes that the Moon was created along with Earth at its formation. The fission theory suggests Earth had been spinning so fast that some material broke away and began to ...

Scientists with a new theory about how Earth’s early continents formed predicted where a superold impact crater should ...

The difference is because of their origins. While Earth's moon formed around Earth, likely due to a giant impact billions of years ago, Saturn's new moons are probably captured objects.

the Moon formed a crust and a mantle below. Giant pools of lava filled impact craters and settled into the lunar lowlands, or maria (Latin for “seas”), while highlands and volcanic domes ...

(CNN) — About 3.8 billion years ago, two massive canyons likely formed on the ... larger Schrödinger impact basin, where an object yet to be identified slammed into the moon billions of years ...

Despite those caveats, the giant impact hypothesis is the most compelling story we have for how the moon formed. And without a time machine into our distant past, we'll never be able to prove it.