Early Earth (2000)
We're going back several billion years here. The planet Earth had already started to
form, when it was hit by a gigantic protoplanet roughly three times the mass of
present-day Mars. As a result, debris was blown into Earth orbit. Some of the debris
started to rain back down on the planet, but much of it coalesced in orbit to form
the Moon. This image shows the Moon just after it had formed as viewed from the
surface of the newly reconstructed Earth. Fire still rains from the sky — the early
Solar System was a much more violent place than it is now.
