Posted on 10/24/2023 10:39:43 AM PDT by Red Badger
Oct. 23 (UPI) -- Scientists now believe the moon could actually be around 40 million years older than initially believed, according to new research.
The finding comes after a group of researchers reexamined a collection of dust collected from the lunar surface and brought back to Earth in 1972, the last time astronauts visited the moon.
Scientists took an in-depth look at crystals embedded within the dust, which was returned to Earth as part of NASA's Apollo 17 mission.
Researchers believe a massive collision of debris with Earth led to the creation of the moon. That impact took place around 100 million years after the solar system's formation and led to a large concentration of material being propelled into the atmosphere, creating our planet's moon.
Initially molten hot, the energy from the collision cooled, allowing scientists to measure and calculate age based on analysis of the crystals in the lunar dust.
"Because we know how old these crystals are, they serve as an anchor for the lunar chronology," study co-author and University of Chicago professor Philipp Heck said in a statement.
The moon was initially thought to be around 4.42 billion years old.
Research, which also involved the University of Glasgow, now puts that age at approximately 4.46 billion years.
"These findings require pushing the timing of the solidification of the lunar crust to within at least the first 100 Myr of the formation of the solar system and provide a minimum age for the Giant Impact event that formed the Earth-Moon system," the study's authors wrote in their findings, published in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters.
"This age pushes back the age of the first preserved lunar crust by ∼40 [million years] and provides a minimum formation age for the moon within 110 [million years] after the formation of the solar system."
Through its Artemis Program, NASA hopes to return a team of astronauts to the moon in 2025.
Well a microscope and telescope are optically very similar, so no surprise. The current theory, as I understand it, is that after the moon formed, much closer to the earth than it is today, it quickly became tidally locked to the earth, after about 10 million years. Quickly on a geological timescale.
Tidally locked means that it always keeps the same face towards the earth. The moon actually wobbles a bit, so that we actually get to see about 55% of its surface from earth. Search on the term “lunar libration”. At the time it became tidally locked, the moon was orbiting faster and earth rotating faster than nowadays. The tidal tugs of earth on the moon, even today, causes the moon to drift further and further away and the earth to rotate more slowly. At the current time, the moon moves away from the earth at about an inch a year and the earth is slowing down by about 0.0015 seconds per century. In the time of Christ, days were about 0.03 seconds shorter than today. The definition of the second in terms of atomic clocks was calibrated to match one part in 86400 of the mean solar day in 1900! Which is why we have leap seconds today!
Fun fact: Pluto and Hydra are the only two bodies in the solar system known to be mutually tidally locked.
It is believed that the near side of the moon, the side facing us, was partially protected from meteor strikes by the earth. A meteor approaching the moon from the earth-side would encounter Earth with its 81 times stronger gravitational field first and be deflected, as often as not straight into the earth! The far side of the moon was afforded no such protection.
Gotta say, you make a heckuva point.
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