April 20, 2009
Where in the World Solar System Is Theia?
The solar system might once have had another planet named Theia, which may have helped create our own planet’s moon.
“It’s a hypothetical world. We’ve never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago — and that it collided with Earth to form the moon,” said Mike Kaiser, a NASA scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Theia is thought to have been about Mars-sized. If the planet crashed into Earth long ago, debris from the collision could have clumped together to form the moon. This scenario was first conceived by Princeton scientists Edward Belbruno and Richard Gott.
Leave a Reply
