proto-Earth tagged posts

By measuring iron isotopes, researchers have shown that our planet originally formed much faster than previously thought. This finding provides new insights on both planetary formation and the likelihood of water and life elsewhere in the universe.

The precursor of our planet, the proto-Earth, formed within a time span of approximately five million years, shows a new study from the Centre for Star and Planet Formation (StarPlan) at the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

On an astronomical scale, this is extremely fast, the researchers explain.

If you compare the solar system’s estimated 4...

For more than a century, scientists have squabbled over how Earth’s moon formed. But researchers at Yale and in Japan say they may have the answer.

Many theorists believe a Mars-sized object slammed into the early Earth, and material dislodged from that collision formed the basis of the moon. When this idea was tested in computer simulations, it turned out that the moon would be made primarily from the impacting object...