New Study Reveals Surprisingly Different Surface

Mercury’s surface contains roughly 37 percent silicon dioxide by mass, according to a study published in Planetary Research, placing the compound up to 25 percent below earlier scientific estimates. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research alongside the Universities of Münster and Göttingen used an indirect calibration method involving laboratory glass beads … Read more

Moon Likely Formed From Collision Between Early Earth and Theia

Earth’s Moon is unusually large compared with the planet it orbits, and the leading explanation begins with catastrophe

Earth’s unusually large moon likely formed from a violent collision with a Mars-sized planet named Theia about 4.5 billion years ago. New geochemical analyses of Apollo lunar samples and terrestrial rocks indicate that Theia and early Earth originated from a similar region of the inner solar system. For decades, astronomers debated how Earth acquired a … Read more