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Narrated by Garrett Kiesel https://kieselkreative.com

[7 | The First Moon]

4.5 billion years ago, when Earth was just a floating blue ball, it whipped around the Sun with a sister planet, opposing its trail. The two spheres of massive proportion would zip past each other on each revolution, never coming in contact. Each of their orbits was shifted slightly from being uniform with the sun like two overlapping circles. This neighboring planet to Earth would eventually become known as Planet Theia. 

Theia was a very unique and special planet. Its path about the center of the solar system went against all logic in the local galaxy. It orbited the Sun in a clockwise direction, unlike everything else moving counterclockwise. It was also like Earth because it was mostly hydrogen and oxygen. However, it was free from water in any form, and surface life was not present. 

The atmosphere was predominantly made up of hydrogen—a miniature sun weighting to ignite. Its core consisted of magnesium, an element abundant in Earth’s crust and seawater. The rare combination of pure element accumulations made the planet act more like a balloon in the wind than a body stuck in the quicksand of gravity. 

Theia was not externally inhabitable but offered all the elements necessary and nested comfortably within the habitable zone. It was only a matter of time before it would have become teeming with life—that is, until it met its inevitable doom. 

Theia and Earth, like two siblings, fought for their mother’s attention—their mother, the Sun. They whipped and twirled about it for millennia attempting to knock the other out of orbit with each flyby. The two planets grasped at all passing objects, sucking them in with their gravity to enhance their size. The increase in mass offered a more significant pull of gravity. Combined with the rotational motion and elliptical trajectories, the larger of the two would have the advantage of pushing the other out of orbit.

If one took the two planets and sped up their evolution over billions of years to a thirty-minute show, it would look as if they were conscious and well aware of the other’s presence within their orbit—a celestial conflict for the primary use of the Sun.

The ballet between the two continued until their sizes could no longer keep them from grazing the other when passing by. They inched closer and closer on their almost uniform trajectories about the Sun for millennia, only in opposite directions. Once the two bodies gained enough mass so that they were of the approximate size, the grouping pushed gravity into a balance. They both then shifted slightly out of their overlapping trajectory into the same course. This happened when each was on the opposite side of the Sun relative to the other. Their new path aligned them on an almost circular route, with a uniform radius about the Sun.

There had been another planet—planet Nibiru—caught in the motion of the two orbiting bodies. The clockwise and counterclockwise movement of Earth and Theia kicked Nibiru back and forth on a semi orbit of the Sun. This action kept it within the habitable zone on a permanent sunny holiday. It would have been as if the United States reversed rotation in November, sending it back to June. Then in June, it would get kicked around, sending it to November. This back-and-forth semi orbit was broken when the two bodies balanced out, sending Nibiru on a new trajectory stretched across all the planets.

The final equating mass was a classic iron asteroid about the size of Rhode Island. It flew past Earth—just missing it—headed towards the Sun. 

When it approached the Sun, the extreme heat expanded it, melting out any noniron contaminants. The chemical reactions then flung it off its direct hit course with the gas ball. When it reentered the vacuum of space, the freezing temperatures forced the molting ball of metal into a nearly perfect sphere—a