This work is a re-imagining of the beginnings of Earth through catastrophic impacts and explosions, about following the smallest specks of rock and dust in space, and connecting it to our own existence.

The Earth formed over 4.6 billion years ago out of a mixture of dust and gas around the young sun. It grew larger thanks to countless collisions between dust particles, asteroids, and other growing planets, including one last giant impact that threw enough rock, gas, and dust into space to form the moon. Earth grew to its final size through one last major collision with another Mars-sized object. This last collision, also known as the “moon-forming impact”, was so large that—in addition to adding lots of material to the Earth—there was enough energy to vaporize some of the rock and metal from both the proto-Earth and the impacting object. This vapor formed a disc around the Earth that eventually cooled and clumped together to become the moon.