On 1 November 2023, scientists reported that, according to computer simulations, remnants of a protoplanet, named Theia, could be inside the Earth, left over from a collision with the Earth in ancient times, and afterwards becoming the Moon. The newly formed Moon settled into a much closer Earth orbit than it has today. Each body therefore appeared much larger in the sky of the other, eclipses were more frequent, and tidal effects were stronger.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth century mysticism came to be used as a substantive. Luther dismissed the allegorical interpretation of the bible, and condemned Mystical theology, which he saw as more Platonic than Christian. The 19th century saw a growing emphasis on individual experience, as a defense against the growing rationalism of western society. The competition between the perspectives of theology and science resulted in a compromise in which most varieties of what had traditionally been called mysticism were dismissed as merely psychological phenomena and only one variety, which aimed at union with the Absolute, the Infinite, or God—and thereby the perception of its essential unity or oneness—was claimed to be genuinely mystical.