The moon may have formed inside the early Earth
Scientists have been puzzling over the moon's formation for a long time, and now there's a new theory that might explain some of the baffling mysteries surrounding our satellite. A new study published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets posits that the moon may have actually formed inside the Earth, before our planet had fully taken shape. This new theory is based on a new planetary object called a synestia. These are produced when two planet-sized bodies crash into one another, resulting in a quickly spinning formation of rock. The release describes it as, "a giant donut of vaporized rock." Synestias only last a century or two before they condense into a planet. "Our model starts with a collision that forms a synestia," Simon Lock, a graduate student at Harvard and coauthor of the article, said in a release . Once this occurred, the moon could have formed in a number of ways. The synestia may have ejected molten rock into its orbit, w...