 Hello everyone and welcome to our universe. Today we'll be answering the question how did the moon form? So this is rather a fundamental question in astronomy. The moon is basically our nearest neighbour and there's always a question of how it really formed. To this day we don't quite know exactly how the moon formed, but there are some really good theories. So let's jump right in and see how the moon came to be. So let's go to the formation of the solar system. The young sun is burning bright at the centre of the system and all of the planets are being formed of the protoplanetary disk. But this is not as simple. It took hundreds of millions of years for the earth and the moon and everything else to form. But how exactly did the moon form? There are basically three theories of how our planet's satellite came to be. There's a giant impact theory, a co-formation theory and a capture theory. All these theories have a scientific value to it. All of them pretty much make sense and all of them pretty much match up with all of our observations and studies. Like all of the planets, the earth was formed from a leftover of the protoplanetary disk of the young sun. But the early solar system was a very violent place. So it was a sense of make your planet as big as possible or simply be destroyed. So let's start off with a giant impact. This is basically that an object crashed into earth a long time ago and this created the moon. This object was known as Theia and it was a mass-sized object that collided with earth. This threw chunks of debris out into space and it eventually gravitationally bound together creating the moon. This sort of formation would explain why the moon is made up of mostly lighter elements. Basically the theory states that the material of the moon could have came from the crust of the earth and this would leave the earth's planet rocky core rather untouched. The second one is the co-formation theory. So moons can often form at the same time as their parent planet. The material in the early solar system would have drew together through gravity. The formation of the moon would have formed at the same time as the formation of the earth and because it would have formed in the same place it would have been made at the same material. This gives a good reason to why the moon has a very similar composition to our planet and it would explain the moon's location. The earth and the moon share much of the same material but the moon is a lot less dense than our planet. So therefore it's unlikely that they would have formed out of the same material because the moon and the earth don't quite have the same heavier elements at their cause. The third one is called a capture theory and this is rather plausible. A great example of this is the moons of Mars in Phobos and Deimos. These are basically captured asteroids taken in by the gravity of Mars so they are technically moons even though they're not spherical. Under the capture theory a rocky body formed elsewhere in the solar system could have been drawn into orbit around the earth. This theory has a lot of weight to it because not only would the early solar system have a lot of bodies in it the earth is the largest planet in the inner solar system so therefore it has the largest gravitational field. However though looking at Mars' moons we see that they're irregular shaped and the moon is rather large compared to its parent planet. In fact the moon is the largest moon in the solar system compared to its parent planet. The co-formation theory and the caption theory both explain some elements of the existence of the moon but they have so many unanswered questions so the leading theory is the giant impact theory. This seems to cover as much as possible and answers most of the questions. This makes it the leading theory in the formation of the moon and is the best scientific evidence to show that our moon was probably once another planet that collided with earth and coalesced into what we know now as our closest neighbor the moon. So I hope that's giving you a great insight into how the moon was formed. If you want to know any more about the theories or about the moon itself or about the early solar system I'll put some links in the description below and as always if you've enjoyed the video click the like button and if you want to support the channel click subscribe and support our patreon page. Thank you for watching and thank you for your support.