How did Earth's moon form? Impact, capture, fission theories and more (Pixabay)

The moon is a fascinating orb hanging up there in the sky above Earth. Its presence affects Earth in many ways and it too is similarly impacted by our planet. For instance, tides in seas on Earth are affected by the Moon. (Reuters)

When the moon passes by, the waters bulge up and create high tides due to the gravitational pull. Here we answer the question, how did Earth's moon form in the first place? (Pixabay)

There have been several theories over many decades. The major ones include the giant impact hypothesis, the co-formation theory, Fission theory and the capture theory. (Reuters)

Our current theory is the giant impactor theory. A body out in space that never became a planet, impacted the Earth. This happened when Earth was just an Embryo, a baby planet. This body is called Theia, a Mars-size planetoid. (NASA)

It ripped apart early Earth's crust and threw up vast quantities of material up into the air that then coalesced into a separate entity that we now call the Moon. This was approximately 4.5 billion years ago. (NASA)

An earlier version of lunar formation theories included 'capture'. It surmised that the moon would have been a stray planetoid that got captured by the gravitational force of Earth. (NASA)

Another version was fission, where Earth was spinning so fast  that the moon sized part of it broke away and formed its own body. (NASA)

And another theory had it that the Earth and moon formed from the protoplanetary disk at the same time (“Co-formation”) (NASA)

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