The Summary
- A new study suggests that the moon may be older than many scientists thought.
- The research suggests that lunar rock samples from the Apollo missions date back to an event that melted the moon’s surface not to the moment it formed.
- The authors therefore think the moon formed around 4.51 billion years ago more than 100 million years earlier than the commonly accepted estimate.
A recent study suggests that the moon may be around 100 million years older than some scientists previously believed.
The study, which was released on Wednesday in the journal Nature, casts doubt on the conventional wisdom that the moon formed approximately 4.35 billion years ago when an asteroid the size of Mars collided with the early Earth to form our natural satellite.
Analysis of lunar rock samples from NASA’s Apollo missions served as the basis for that timeframe. However, according to the new study, the moon originated approximately 4.51 billion years ago, and then underwent a major re-melting event at the same time that other scientists had previously supposed it had formed.
The authors claim that the melting happened when the moon was receding from Earth and was twisted by the planet’s continual gravitational pull, causing it to superheat. The study found that the process changed the lunar surface, concealing the moon’s true age.
According to Francis Nimmo, the lead author of the study and a professor in the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Earth & Planetary Sciences Department, the intense heat probably remelted the moon’s surface, thereby resetting all of the clocks in the lunar rocks.
According to him, the moon rocks do not reveal the moon’s formation date, but rather the time of a subsequent event that heated the moon.
The exact age of the moon has been disputed by scientists for many years; Nimmo and his associates are not the first to propose an earlier estimate. The new discoveries support the expanding body of evidence suggesting that the moon’s history may be more complex than what the Apollo samples showed.
For example, planetary scientists have had difficulty explaining how the moon was formed 4.35 billion years ago by a huge collision, when most large celestial objects were believed to have already clumped together to become planets.
The age of the moon was reasonably estimated by those who studied the Apollo samples, but Nimmo noted that those who simulate the formation of planets in the solar system always struggled to explain why there was still so much large debris in the air 200 million years after the solar system originated. Two groups have been requesting various ages, and that has been the situation.
Nimmo’s team’s revised timeline might also help explain why zircon, a mineral found in Apollo moon rocks, was thought to be about 4.5 billion years old. Like other minerals on the moon, lunar zircon was believed to have crystallized due to the moon’s tremendous temperatures during formation, but scientists have long been perplexed by its far longer age.
According to the latest study, Nimmo and his colleagues propose that tidal heating is the process responsible for the moon’s superheating.
According to Nimmo, there are specific locations where the orbit may momentarily go awry as the moon is pushed away. The moon may be compressed and stretched by Earth’s gravity during that period, which warms it.
It is believed that Jupiter and its moons experience comparable tidal heating. According to a 2020 study, some of the gas giant’s frozen moons may be sufficiently stretched and squeezed by its gravity to heat their innards or perhaps melt rock into molten. With the Jovian moon Io, such is believed to be the case.
Recent and upcoming lunar missions could provide betterinsights into the moon s evolutionary history, according to Nimmo. That includes China s Chang e 6 mission, which collected samples from the far side of the moon, and NASA s planned Artemis moon missions.
Carsten M nker, a scientist at the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy at the University of Cologne who was not involved with the study, said tidal heating is a plausible way to satisfy disagreements over the timing of the moon s formation.
In order to determine the moon’s exact age, M nker’s own study has concentrated on dating lunar materials.
The new study, he said, “was written by people who were long in the camp that the moon was younger, but now all three [authors] agree with an older lunar age.
This certainly moves our understanding closer, M nker said.
Determining what happened during the turbulent early days of the solar system is crucial to comprehending how the planets in our celestial neighborhood formed, even though the difference between 4.35 billion and 4.51 billion years may appear to be minimal in terms of cosmic timescales.
The evolution of the solar system was quite rapid. Within just a few tens of millions of years, the whole array of celestial bodies as we know them today was formed, M nker said. That s why we need a really good time resolution of these very early events, and that s why it s important to understand how the Earth-moon system formed.
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