Planetary geophysicists have used a new numerical model to determine that the moon is, in fact, 85 million years younger than previously thought, due to the extremely violent and unlikely collision of two protoplanets.
The coffins at the German Aerospace Center, led by Maxime Maurice, produced a model to more precisely calculate what exactly happened when the protoplanet Theia crashed on a nascent Earth and still in formation about 4.425 million years ago.
Previous estimates had suggested that the moon formed about 4.51 billion years ago, that is, about 85 million years ago. The new model suggests, however, that it was millions of years later when the molten Earth was still in the process of taking shape and covering in a vast ocean of liquid magma that the collision took place.
It was then, they say, that Theia stunned the world we call home, firing a large globule of magma into space, which would later form the moon that orbits our planet to this day.
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“The results of our latest model suggest that young Earth was hit by a protoplanet about 140 million years after the birth of the solar system.” Maurice says. “According to our calculations, this happened 4,425 million years ago, with an uncertainty of 25 million years, and the moon was born.”
Critically, there is no trace of Theia, so while the scientific community mostly agrees on how the moon formed, that’s when the debate arises.
Large amounts of rock from Earth’s mantle vaporized on impact, forming a ring of dust that gradually consolidated to form the moon. However, the lunar rocks brought to Earth by NASA’s Apollo and Soviet Moon missions do not actually give us an exact record of their age.
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It turns out that the early moon was covered in an ocean of magma more than 1,000 kilometers deep, with a crust of floating crystals on the surface. That formed an insulating layer that slowed down the cooling and solidification process of our natural satellite, keeping it molten for much longer than we thought.
By recording changes in samples taken from the moon, scientists were able to more accurately map the time frame of its evolution until about 4.425 billion years ago, plus or minus 0.025 billion years. As a result, this coincides quite closely with the previously determined formation of the Earth’s core.
“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.” says Professor Thorsten Kleine of the Institute for Planetology at the University of Münster in Germany, who was also involved in the research.
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