The Moon May Be Millions Of Years Younger Than Previously Thought
by Erin Podolak | 11:25 am, August 18th
A new analysis conducted on lunar rocks brought back to Earth by the Apollo 16 astronauts has led researchers to believe that the moon may be 60 million years younger than previously thought. This would make the current prevailing theory about how the moon formed impossible. The new results date the moon at around 4.36 billion years old, which means that the moon formed around the same time as the oldest crusts on Earth (4.4 billion year old zircons from Australia.)
Led by Lars Borg of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in CA, the researchers used new refining techniques to study the isotopes lead and neodymium in a 1.88gram sample of ferroan anorthosites (FAN) from NASA’s lunar rock collection. The 4.36 billion year number refers to the time when the sample crystallized. This opposes the giant impact theory, the currently favored theory about moon formation (although this theory has itself been called into question lately.)
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