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The shift
towards Shoemaker's ideas that the Solar System was a far less inert
place than we had believed and was formerly far more active, with
tumultuous collisions in its infancy, opened the doors for the 'Giant
Impact' theory.
Most of the more specialized aspects of the current
study of the moon, and the Giant Impact theory itself, in many ways
support the hypotheses of this website, and they will be integrated
in the further discussion of the Moon. However, one of the main
ideas within the theory which this website's hypothesis does challenge
is the former existence of a smaller, Mars sized planet, called
Theia. It is believed that Theia lay in an outer orbit amongst the
Gas Giants, but was pulled out of its orbit and collided with the
Earth during the later stages of Earth's accretion, thus causing
the impact that resulted in the Moon's formation.
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