Lead author Sergio Ruiz-Bonilla, a PhD researcher in Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology, said: “By adding different amounts of spin to Theia in simulations, or by having no spin at all, it gives you a whole range of different outcomes for what might have happened when the early Earth was hit by a massive object all those billions of years ago.
“It’s exciting that some of our simulations produced this orbiting clump of material that is relatively not much smaller than the Moon, with a disc of additional material around the post-impact Earth that would help the clump grow in mass over time.
“I wouldn’t say that this is the Moon, but it’s certainly a very interesting place to continue looking.”
Before the Apollo mission research, there were three – now widely discredited – theories about how the Moon formed.