A subtle chemical trace locked inside ancient lunar samples is reshaping how scientists understand the Moon’s earliest history, pointing to the unexpected presence of oxygen during its formation.

In the previous episode #13, we looked at what happens when three spheres—planets, soap bubbles, and water droplets—collide.

We already know a decent amount about how planets form, but moon formation is another process entirely, and one we're not as familiar with. Scientists think they understand how the most important moon ...

New computer simulations of the collision that produced Earth’s moon suggest the whole process, from a Mars-size body slamming into the young Earth to an intact moon settling into orbit, could have ...

How did the Moon form and how fast did it happen? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated a potential new ...

Over 4.6 billion years ago, Earth took shape from a spinning cloud of dust and gas surrounding the young sun. Tiny particles within this cloud collided and clumped together, driven by gravity and ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more. This ...

Earth’s unusually large Moon may not have assembled gradually from a vast ring of debris after all. Under the right conditions, much of it could have emerged as an intact body only hours after another ...

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed a remarkable formation in Madagascar that looks surprisingly ...

The conventional explanation for the moon's formation is that an enormous rock smashed into the nascent Earth and created it as a result. A new theory challenges the particulars of how events may have ...

Many of the most interesting bodies in our Solar System aren’t planets, but the moons that orbit them. They have active volcanoes, hydrocarbon oceans, geysers, and moon-wide oceans buried under icy ...