A new look at the age of zircon nanocrystals in a lunar rock sample brought back by a 1972 NASA mission revealed that the moon formed at least 4.46 billion years ago, the server wrote New Scientist.
Apollo 17 was the last space flight during which a human stepped onto the surface of our natural satellite.
As the leaf reminds The Guardianthe exact age of the Moon, which has accompanied the Earth for several billion years, has been the subject of expert discussions until now.
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“It’s incredible that we can have proof that a piece of rock is the oldest piece of the Moon we’ve found so far. It is a fulcrum for so many questions about Earth,” said the lead author of the study published in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters Jennika Greer from the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
Body shaping and cooling
Scientists estimate that roughly 100 million years after the formation of the Solar System, when the planets had already formed, a body the size of Mars crashed into the Earth and ejected a large amount of material into its surroundings.
The moon was eventually formed from it. The incredible energy of the impact meant that the satellite’s surface was initially molten, with the magma ocean eventually solidifying.
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The crystals examined in the new study were formed during this cooling. Their composition offers researchers the opportunity to explore their age and the age of the Moon itself. However, the exact determination can still be difficult.
But according to scientists, the new findings strongly suggest that the crystals, and therefore our satellites, are at least 4.46 billion years old.
“This pushes the age of the first preserved lunar crust back by about 40 million years and sets the minimum age for the formation of the Moon to 110 million years after the formation of the Solar System,” the experts summarized.
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2023-10-24 14:37:45
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