The moon may be older than previously thought, study finds

The moon may be older than some scientists thought, according to a new study. It suggests that rock samples from the Apollo missions date back to a melting event, not to the moon's formation.

The moon may be more than 100 million years older than some scientists previously thought, according to a new study.

The research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, challenges the longstanding idea that the moon formed roughly 4.35 billion years ago, after a Mars-sized object smashed into the early Earth and created our natural satellite.

That timeline is based on analyses of lunar rock samples from NASA’s Apollo missions. But the new study suggests that the moon formed earlier — around 4.51 billion years ago — and then experienced a dramatic “re-melting” event at the time other scientists had assumed it first formed.

The melting occurred as the moon was moving away from the Earth, the authors say, when the planet’s constant gravitational tugs warped the moon in a way that caused it to super-heat. The process altered the lunar surface and thus hid the moon’s real age, according to the study.

Francis Nimmo, the study’s lead author and a professor in the Earth & Planetary Sciences Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the extreme heating likely re-melted the moon’s surface, effectively “resetting all the clocks” in lunar rocks.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/moon-age-older-study-rcna184499

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