Study: Moon is much "older" than we thought

The vastness of outer space hides secrets that are hard to imagine. A study suggests that the Moon is 80 million to 180 million years older than previous estimates. According to the study, published in the journal Nature, rock samples taken from the Moon's surface have been incorrectly interpreted in the past. Three researchers from the United States, France and Germany claim that 4.35 billion years ago, the Moon was moving very close to Earth in a highly elliptical orbit. At that time, the Earth's powerful tidal forces rapidly heated the Moon, causing it to release large amounts of magma from its interior to the surface, the authors of the new study say. Researchers say most of the rock samples on the Moon's surface reflect the cooling of this magma, not the actual formation of the Moon. Instead, they explain that shortly after Earth formed, about 4.5 billion years ago, it collided with a Mars-sized body called Theia. The impact catapulted large amounts of hot rock from the crust and mantle of the two bodies into space, and some of that debris formed the Moon, the scientists explained. Lunar rock samples brought back to Earth by astronauts on the early Apollo missions and a series of unmanned missions indicated that the Moon's surface cooled 4.35 billion years ago, and scientists assumed that this was the age of Earth's natural satellite. But researchers have found crystals of a mineral called zircon in lunar rocks that are much older, casting doubt on the Moon's supposed age. In their study, Francis Nimmo, Thorsten Kleine, and Alessandro Morbidelli suggest that the Moon is between 4.43 billion and 4.53 billion years old. They say this explanation fits better with dynamic models of planetary formation in the Solar System.