A Violent Splash of Magma That May Have Made the Moon (opens in new tab)

From the article:

> During Earth’s earliest days, it was covered by a sheet of molten silicate rock. Dr. Hosono’s team wondered what would have happened if Theia had crashed into Earth at that time, rather than during a later, cooler, more solid phase.

This is the simulation of how a moon could have been formed, this is not supposed to represent the formation of the actual Moon.

Also, if you play the animation slowly, you can see a brighter circle forming at the point of impact, before the impact. Is that part of the simulation or an artifact of the animation, I wonder?

Presumably Earth would be smaller without the impact. Mars-sized matter was added to the Earth as a result of the impact and all that was lost was the moon (and perhaps some smaller amount that escaped entirely).

Without tides we may not even exist in that scenario.

According to Neal deGrasse Tyson (source: his recent books and I think I've heard it on his YT channel too) it is quite possible that early Mars had better conditions for life than early Earth and that life could travel to Earth from there.