Birth of a planet
4.5 billion years ago
Earth grew from a cloud of dust and rocks surrounding the young Sun. Earth formed when some of these rocks collided. Eventually they were massive enough to attract other rocks with the force of gravity, and vacuumed up all the nearby junk, becoming the Earth. The Moon probably formed soon after, when a planet-sized chunk of rock smashed into the Earth and threw up a huge cloud of debris. This condensed into the Moon.
See other: History of Life
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The crater shown in the video is “Meteor Crater,” in Arizona. I’ve climbed to the bottom (and obviously back again) of that crater.
Interesting! How deep is it?
Diameter 1.186 kilometers (0.737 mi)
Depth 170 meters (560 ft)
Rise 45 meters (148 ft)
impactor diameter 50 meters (160 ft)
Age 50,000 years