Saifullah Sani
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We know, intuitively, that everything in space is old, but just how old? When talking about Earth’s moon, the answer is “very old, but not quite as old as we thought,” according to a study published in the journal Nature. The authors argue (with a 99.9% degree of accuracy) that the debris that eventually grew into the moon were ejected from Earth come 95 million years after the birth of the solar system.
Previously, scientists estimated that the moon formed nearly 4.6 billion years ago following a collision between Earth and Mars-sized object named Theia. In that model, the impact would have largely melted Earth, suggesting that about 40% of the moon’s formative material would have been from Theia. As it turns out, when looking at isotopes, scientists found the moon and Earth to be incredibly similar.
“This means that at the atomic level, the Earth and the moon are identical,”study lead author Seth Jacobson, a planetary scientist at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France, told Space.com. “This new information challenged the giant impact theory for lunar formation.”
The new study is based on 259 computer simulations of how the solar system evolved from a primordial disk of planetary “embryos” swirling around the sun. The programs simulate the crashes and fusions of the small bodies until they combine into the rocky planets we know today.
Older methods of dating the moon relied on measuring naturally-occurring radioactive decay of atoms inside lunar rocks. By contrast, this new study works totally independently of any radiometric techniques.
“We think that the thing that hit Earth and ended up forming the moon, the lion’s share of it stayed on Earth. A small fraction of its mass and some material from Earth was pushed off into space to form the moon,” astronomer John Chambers, with the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, said in an interview.
Of course, new answers always bring with them more questions. Based on this new information, scientists now wonder why some rocky planets, like Earth and Venus, take a long time to form, while others (like Mars) develop relatively fast. Until scientists get their hands on meteorites from Venus (none are known to exist), it will remain a mystery.
The mystery of the moon’s age has been solved | The State Column
Previously, scientists estimated that the moon formed nearly 4.6 billion years ago following a collision between Earth and Mars-sized object named Theia. In that model, the impact would have largely melted Earth, suggesting that about 40% of the moon’s formative material would have been from Theia. As it turns out, when looking at isotopes, scientists found the moon and Earth to be incredibly similar.
“This means that at the atomic level, the Earth and the moon are identical,”study lead author Seth Jacobson, a planetary scientist at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France, told Space.com. “This new information challenged the giant impact theory for lunar formation.”
The new study is based on 259 computer simulations of how the solar system evolved from a primordial disk of planetary “embryos” swirling around the sun. The programs simulate the crashes and fusions of the small bodies until they combine into the rocky planets we know today.
Older methods of dating the moon relied on measuring naturally-occurring radioactive decay of atoms inside lunar rocks. By contrast, this new study works totally independently of any radiometric techniques.
“We think that the thing that hit Earth and ended up forming the moon, the lion’s share of it stayed on Earth. A small fraction of its mass and some material from Earth was pushed off into space to form the moon,” astronomer John Chambers, with the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, said in an interview.
Of course, new answers always bring with them more questions. Based on this new information, scientists now wonder why some rocky planets, like Earth and Venus, take a long time to form, while others (like Mars) develop relatively fast. Until scientists get their hands on meteorites from Venus (none are known to exist), it will remain a mystery.
The mystery of the moon’s age has been solved | The State Column
