How the Moon Was Formed: A Science Cosmic Mystery

2025-10-01

Send us a textSubscribe and unleash your inner science goblin. We see you. We respect it.In this Nature Mysteries Minisode, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole tackle one of the biggest unanswered questions in planetary science: how was the Moon formed?We look at what we do know—like why lunar rocks look almost identical to Earth’s, why one side of the Moon is thicker than the other, and why it’s slowly drifting away at 1.5 inches per year. Then we dig into the wild theories scientists are still...

Send us a text

Subscribe and unleash your inner science goblin. We see you. We respect it.

In this Nature Mysteries Minisode, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole tackle one of the biggest unanswered questions in planetary science: how was the Moon formed?

We look at what we do know—like why lunar rocks look almost identical to Earth’s, why one side of the Moon is thicker than the other, and why it’s slowly drifting away at 1.5 inches per year. Then we dig into the wild theories scientists are still testing:

🌑 The Giant Impact Hypothesis (a Mars-sized planet colliding with Earth)
🌋 Evidence that the Moon was once covered in a magma ocean
🧲 Why the Moon has less iron than Earth
🌀 And how some new models suggest the Moon formed in just… hours

It’s science, it’s speculation, and it’s the perfect reminder that even our closest neighbor in space is still one big mystery.

🎧 This is the first in our Nature Mysteries series—four bite-sized episodes digging into the weird questions science hasn’t solved (yet).

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