On every SERVER iss PARTYTIME ! ! ! Come oN...

Whence our moon? Was it a chunk of Earth flung off in our planet's early history? Did the Earth capture a small, roaming planet in its gravity grip? Or did the moon fashion itself alongside our world from the same planetary batter? One of the Apollo program's chief scientific goals was to give lunar researchers the means to decide, once and for all, between these three main theories of how the moon formed.

What transpired in this "battle of the Big Three" after the last Apollo mission flew in 1972 surprised just about everyone. The story provides a revealing glimpse of the workings of the scientific process, while at the same time opening a window on the origins of what one lunar researcher has called "one of the most peculiar bodies in the solar system"—the moon.