NASA’s Webb Provides Crash Course on Planet-Shattering Collisions

Filed by Dr. Kai Vega

What if the Moon is the leftover debris of a planet-on-planet demolition derby? That's the scenario NASA's Webb Space Telescope is helping put under the cosmic microscope, peering at distant star systems where worlds collide in flashes of vaporized rock. By studying these planet-shattering impacts, Webb is essentially giving us a backstage pass to our own violent past—when a Mars-sized protoplanet named Theia may have slammed into infant Earth and splashed out the Moon. It's a crash course in planetary destruction, and the wreckage is rewriting everything we thought we knew about how solar systems, including our own, really form.

Dr. Kai Vega

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Here's the thing about cosmic smashups: they're not just destruction; they're the universe's way of doing interior decoration. The leading theory says our Moon is essentially a chunk of Theia fused with Earth's mantle—a permanent scar from a world-shattering impact. But we weren't around to see

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