Now, scientists, say, the remains of the protoplanet can still be found. The rock is believed to be nestled deep in the Earth, writes Science Magazine.
If the remnants of the protoplanet, known as Theia, did survive the impact, that might explain why two lumps of hot rock the size of a continent lie in the Earth’s mantle. The details, one under Africa and the other under the Pacific Ocean.
These massive blobs would have stood about 100 times taller than Mount Everest, had they been lifted to the surface of the earth, according to reports Live Science previous.
The impact of Theia shaped the Moon and turned the Earth’s surface into a turbulent sea of magma. Some scientists theorize that the clumps formed when the oceans cooled and crystallized.
Others argue that the blob contains Earth’s rock that somehow escaped the effects of the collision and lodged, undisturbed for millions of years, near the center of the planet.
But last week, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Qian Yuan, a geodynamics doctoral student at Arizona State University (ASU) Tempe, presented an alternative hypothesis.
He suggested that after the Moon-forming collision, solid material from Theia’s mantle descended deep beneath the Earth’s surface, accumulating into what we now know as “blobs”. According to the Yuan model, rocks 1.5% to 3.5% denser than Earth’s mantle will not mix with surrounding rocks.
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