Titan may be the battered survivor of a colossal moon merger that reshaped Saturn’s rings and rewrote the planet’s history.

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may have been born in a colossal cosmic crash. New research suggests Titan formed when two older moons slammed together hundreds of millions of years ago—an event so violent it reshaped Saturn’s entire moon system and may have indirectly sparked the formation of its iconic rings. Clues come from Titan’s unusual orbit, its surprisingly smooth surface, and the strange behavior of the tumbling moon Hyperion.

New research suggests that Saturn’s brilliant rings and its largest moon, Titan, may share a violent past shaped by collisions between moons. Although NASA’s Cassini spacecraft transformed our understanding of Saturn during its 13 year mission, it also uncovered new puzzles, including the surprisingly young age of Saturn’s rings and Titan’s shifting orbit. A new study led by SETI Institute scientist Matija Ćuk proposes that these mysteries are connected and that Titan itself may have formed when two earlier moons merged.