New study finds the moon is about 85 million years younger than we thought

Scientists at the German Aerospace Center calculated how long it took for the moon’s ocean of magma to cool, it is a widespread belief that the lunar surface ever melted, and they estimated that the moon is actually almost 100 million years younger than what was previously thought. – about 85 million years younger, to be exact.

“This is the first time that the age of the Moon can be directly linked to an event that occurred at the end of Earth formation, that is, the formation of the nucleus,” said Thorsten Kleine, co-author of the Institute for Planetology study. at the University of Münster in Germany.

How the moon was made

Many scientists agree with the moon’s origin story: about 4.51 billion years ago, the Earth was still heating up and changing rapidly. During that time, it collided with a protoplanet called Theia, which fired rock shots from Earth into space.

Theia is named after one of the titans in Greek mythology, known as the mother of the moon goddess Selene. Nothing remains of the protoplanet.

These debris eventually accumulated over a couple of thousand years and formed Earth’s natural satellite – the moon.

The energy that resulted from the agglomeration of rocks created an ocean of magma on the surface of the rising moon. It finally crystallized and formed the lunar surface as we know it today.

How to age a 4 billion year old astral body

Samples returned from the moon during the Apollo missions and Soviet robotic Luna missions have not helped provide data for an exact age of the moon. So scientists have had to explore other methods.

Using a computer model, the team of scientists estimated how long it took for the moon’s ocean of magma to cool and solidify. Knowing how long that crystallization process took gave them clues to how old the moon really is.

Previous models estimated that it took up to 30 million years for the ocean of magma to cool down. This new study has suggested that those models had millions of years of rest.

But how to recreate a process that took place during the beginning of the existence of the solar system? That part required a “great deal of imagination and creativity,” the researchers said.

Scientists also needed to calculate the composition of the ancient minerals that formed when the ocean solidified. This helped them link different types of rocks to certain stages of the evolution of the magma ocean.

All that modeling discovered that it took the moon almost 200 million years to cool off from its molten form and create what we now know as the lunar crust.

Scientists looked at the moon’s mineral composition to estimate that the moon is about 4.425 million years old, or 85 million years younger than previous studies had shown. That was around the time the Earth’s core was established, the researchers said.