Where does the Moon come from?
For fifty years, the giant impact has been the default answer.
But it does not explain the Earth–Moon isotopic identity.
It does not explain the crustal dichotomy.
It does not explain the 350-Myr delay of the terrestrial dynamo.
It does not explain the Chang'e-6 olivines.
This work proposes a different answer:
the Moon was born from the Earth itself — not from a collision, but from the internal instability of a fully molten, rapidly rotating proto-Earth.
Accretion energy exceeds the energy required to melt the entire silicate mantle by a factor of ≈155.
The proto-Earth was therefore a magma body rotating in 3.5 hours, without a Moon to stabilise it, its axis wobbling chaotically within [40°,70°] in its own frame.
A single engine — the progressive segregation of iron and nickel toward the forming core — drives three coupled transitions: the emergence of a Coherent Magmatic Torus, two to three hypersonic ejections that build the Moon layer by layer, and the delayed onset of the terrestrial dynamo (≈350 Myr, no free parameter).
Every lunar layer is a frozen archive of the state of Hadean differentiation at the moment of its accretion.
This is not a philosophical claim.
It is a set of quantitative, falsifiable predictions.
One or more seismic interfaces between 200 and 530 km depth — where successive layers, increasingly iron-rich toward the interior, produce a measurable echo — will be tested by Chang'e-7 in August 2026 and by Artemis III.
Mantle ejecta from the South Pole–Aitken basin are predicted to carry a high Fe/Si signature, testable in Chang'e-6 samples and by Artemis III direct sampling.
This version introduces a complementary geochemical test based on the SPA basin, and acknowledges two remaining limitations: impact mixing in SPA ejecta (L9) and the current absence of direct deep-mantle samples (L10).
All hypotheses are ranked.
All limitations are acknowledged.
The theory will stand or fall on the data.
An interactive simulation of the TPT mechanism is freely accessible at:
Publication Date: 2026-06-19