Theia: How the Moon Was Made and Why We Are Two Planets: The 4.5-Billion-Year Murder That Made Us

70% of the Moon is not the Moon.

2047. Shackleton Crater, Lunar South Pole.

Dr. Maya Chen is 1,847 meters down, 40 Kelvin in the shade, and 400 meters past her GO order when her drill hits something that cannot exist.

A vein of green.

Fo99 olivine. Pure forsterite. Holding water. Holding neon. With an oxygen isotope signature that hasn't existed for 4.51 billion years.

It's not lunar. It's not contamination.

It's Theia. The planet that hit Earth. The planet that died to make us.

For fifty years we thought the Moon was Earth's daughter. Maya's data proves it was a murder - and a marriage. Earth and Theia vaporized into a donut of molten rock called a synestia, and from its outer edge, the first snow of a new world fell.

That snow was green. And it has been waiting in the dark ever since.

For fans of The Martian, Project Hail Mary, and Blindsight - a hard science thriller where every equation is real.

Every child born under the Moon is a child of two planets.