This week the moon is our nearest neighbour, but its origins are still mysterious.

I hope the audience will also learn from this and know a bit more about the beautiful moon that we have just over our head.

And the unsung hero of the materials world.

I always get the sense that people outside chemistry actually don't know a great deal about these sorts of materials.

And they really are very versatile and showing a lot of promise.

Plus the poet who's been hanging out with solar physicists for his new book.

This is the Nature podcast for April 9th, 2015.

I'm Kerry Smith.

And I'm Charlotte Stoddart.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to switched on podcast listeners that the moon isn't made of cheese.

But what is it made from and how is it formed? Since the 1970s, the leading explanation

has involved an object object the size of Mars

smashing into the early Earth, with the object leaving behind enough material for a moon.

Researchers call this the giant impactor theory. But there's a problem. The moon has almost

exactly the same isotopic composition as the Earth. That basically

means its chemical profile is almost identical, which seems like a bit of a coincidence.

Here's astronomer Robin Canop discussing the giant impactor theory with us in 2013.

That could produce a moon with the same composition as the Earth

if the impactor had had the identical composition to the Earth.

That is an extremely improbable event.

Now, researchers at the Technion Institute in Israel

believe they may have a solution, as Adam Levy found out.

...