Deep beneath our feet, massive, mysterious structures are influencing the very foundation of our planet. Known as superplumes, these enormous blobs of material, hidden near the Earth’s core, could be ...

The giant-impact hypothesis posits that billions of years ago a Mars-sized body named Theia collided with the early Earth. The immense energy from this impact not only significantly altered Earth ...

In this image, the proposed hit-and-run collision is simulated in 3D, shown about an hour after impact. A cut-away view shows the iron cores. Theia (or most of it) barely escapes, so a follow-on ...

These simulations corroborate the hypothesis that materials from Theia were introduced into Earth's lower mantle during the impact event. Ongoing debates persist among scientists regarding the ...

Other scientists propose that after the impact all of the oxygen was able to move around in the hot vapor surrounding the Earth and moon, mixing up all the different oxygen isotopes and erasing any ...

This idea, known as the giant impact hypothesis ... it's not implausible that our newborn Earth was hit by something like Theia. The issue, according to Sossi and his team, is that Earth and ...

Caption MFM simulation of the canonical Moon-Forming giant impact. Here different colors trace different components of Gaia and Theia. The lower mantle of Gaia, denoted by the dashed circle with a ...