The Moon Is Millions of Years Younger Than We Thought, Scientists Suggest
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Quoted By: >>11902939 >>11903149 >>11903208
Loli moon?
(https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-calculate-that-the-moon-might-be-younger-than-we-thought)
>Looking back through several billion years of history isn't easy, and new discoveries continually prompt us to rethink just how the Moon came to be. Now, a new study suggests Earth's satellite is much younger than we tend to think – about 85 million years younger, in fact.
Researchers say that lunar rock samples collected on the Apollo missions aren't old enough to verify the normally accepted 4.51 billion-year figure for the Moon's age – but that it can be calculated by looking back to the very first moments of our nearest celestial neighbour.
According to the commonly accepted hypothesis, the Moon was formed from the debris of a collision between Earth and a smaller planet called Theia, spewing out molten rock that eventually solidified into one whole body that began orbiting Earth.
That means the rock that makes up the Moon came from Earth, and can be used to date it, with some sophisticated modelling. The new study suggests the Moon was created when Earth was almost fully formed.
>"The results of our latest modelling suggest that the young Earth was hit by a protoplanet some 140 million years after the birth of the Solar System 4.567 billion years ago," says geophysicist Maxime Maurice from the German Aerospace Centre (https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2020/03/20200710_a-slightly-younger-moon.html).
>"According to our calculations, this happened 4.425 billion years ago – with an uncertainty of 25 million years – and the Moon was born."
The new analysis goes into serious levels of detail and shows just how many factors need to be taken into account – how holes punctured in the lunar surface may have affected the speed at which the Moon cooled down, for example, and how deep the original ocean of magma may have been.
(https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-calculate-that-the-moon-might-be-younger-than-we-thought)
>Looking back through several billion years of history isn't easy, and new discoveries continually prompt us to rethink just how the Moon came to be. Now, a new study suggests Earth's satellite is much younger than we tend to think – about 85 million years younger, in fact.
Researchers say that lunar rock samples collected on the Apollo missions aren't old enough to verify the normally accepted 4.51 billion-year figure for the Moon's age – but that it can be calculated by looking back to the very first moments of our nearest celestial neighbour.
According to the commonly accepted hypothesis, the Moon was formed from the debris of a collision between Earth and a smaller planet called Theia, spewing out molten rock that eventually solidified into one whole body that began orbiting Earth.
That means the rock that makes up the Moon came from Earth, and can be used to date it, with some sophisticated modelling. The new study suggests the Moon was created when Earth was almost fully formed.
>"The results of our latest modelling suggest that the young Earth was hit by a protoplanet some 140 million years after the birth of the Solar System 4.567 billion years ago," says geophysicist Maxime Maurice from the German Aerospace Centre (https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2020/03/20200710_a-slightly-younger-moon.html).
>"According to our calculations, this happened 4.425 billion years ago – with an uncertainty of 25 million years – and the Moon was born."
The new analysis goes into serious levels of detail and shows just how many factors need to be taken into account – how holes punctured in the lunar surface may have affected the speed at which the Moon cooled down, for example, and how deep the original ocean of magma may have been.
