A recent study using moon rocks from the Apollo shows evidence of a planet which scientists believe collided with the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago.

The moon rocks were gathered during NASA's Apollo missions, but newer scanning electron microscopes have allowed scientists to pinpoint previously undetectable chemical traces of a Mars-sized planet believed to have collided with the Earth and formed the moon.

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Scientists have called the mysterious planet Theia - after the mother of the Moon goddess Selene - and state that debris from the collision broke off into space to create the moon.

The giant impact theory has seen a consensus among scientists since the 1980s, however, it wasn't until recently that experts were able to further confirm the idea.

The team which conducted the study was led by Daniel Herwartz of Germany's Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. The group was able to locate a difference between rocks from Earth and rocks from Theia and then develop a fingerprint for the destroyed planet.

Herwartz noted that the early solar system was like a shooting gallery with planets occasionally colliding with one another.

"I think that Theia and the proto-Earth formed in the same region of the protoplanetary disk, more or less from the same material," the scientists said, further stating that they believe 30 to 50 percent of the moon to be made up of debris from Theia while the rest was formed from fragments which broke off the Earth.

The study also showed that the Earth and Theia most likely had very similar compositions as they formed within close proximity of one another.

However, Herwartz's team was only able to analyze three moon rocks which, according to Dr. Mahesh Anand of the Open University, isn't representative enough of the entire lunar surface. Dr. Anand recommended that further studies be carried out in order to solidify the findings.

TagsScience, collision, planet, Theia