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The Moon Itself

Radiolab

ANECDOTE

Moon Formation

  • Roughly 4.4 billion years ago, a Mars-sized planet collided with a 100-million-year-old Earth.
  • This impact vaporized both celestial bodies, creating a massive, swirling cloud of gas ten times Earth's current size.
  • The cloud, intensely hot and spinning rapidly, gradually cooled, forming magma rain that clumped together.
  • Some clumps coalesced to form the moon within this gaseous cloud.
  • As the cloud contracted, the moon emerged, becoming Earth's satellite.
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