Scientists have concluded that Earth is actually made up from two planets which came together in a head-on collision that was so powerful it formed the Moon. Initially scientists believed that the Moon was created when a smaller planet called Theia grazed the Earth and broke it up, sending a small piece of it hurling into space where it caught in Earth’s gravity. However, scientists have now discovered after studying Moon rocks that their oxygen isotapes are the same as on Earth. Telegraph.co.uk reports: It means that the collision between Their and the early Earth was so violent that the two planets effectively melded together to form a new planet, a chunk of which was knocked off to form the Moon. “We don’t see any difference between the Earth’s and the Moon’s oxygen isotopes; they’re indistinguishable,” said Edward Young, lead author of the new study and a UCLA professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry. “Theia was thoroughly mixed into both the Earth and the Moon, and evenly dispersed between them. “This explains why we don’t see a different signature of Theia in the Moon versus the Earth.” The crash with Theia happened approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, almost [...]