Have you noticed the Moon? It’s our home planet’s natural satellite. According to current thinking, it was created by a collision between the very young Earth and a sibling protoplanet during the Solar System’s formative millennia, some four thousand million years ago.

Without the Moon, which was much closer to Earth millions of years back and has been slowly shifting further away in its orbit, it is thought unlikely that life as we know it might have begun and been nurtured here. Earth’s oceans have tides caused by the tiny gravitational pull of our nearest celestial neighbour.