How Was the Moon Formed? A Look at the Theories

Scientists are still not completely sure how our moon was formed. Early theories postulated that it spun off from the Earth as the Earth was cooling and still spinning rapidly. Or maybe it was an object passing near to Earth which was captured in our planet’s gravity.

In this video, Universe Today publisher Fraser Cain provides a review of the major theories about how the Moon was formed and discusses at length the current, most widely accepted theory, that the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized object slammed into the Earth, billions of years ago. That collision turned the newly formed Earth into a molten ball of rock again, and ejected material into orbit which eventually came together under its gravitational pull to form the Moon.

We’ve also embedded a very cool animation of the giant impact theory, created by high school 3D animation students at Walden School of Liberal Arts in Provo, Utah for the Center for Lunar Origin and Evolution, part of the NASA Lunar Science Institute.