Today in TechEarth’s moon may be 200 million years younger than previously thought
If you take a glance skyward tonight and notice that the Moon looks just a tad fresher than usual, you can thank California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. After studying rocks brought back from the Apollo missions, researchers there believe they have stumbled upon evidence that the Moon wasn't created in the early days of our solar system, but may actually be roughly 200 million years younger.
Measuring the age of Moon rocks is inherently difficult because of dust and other contaminates. Scientists at the lab overcame this hurdle by soaking their sample in an acidic bath before testing, and the results were somewhat unexpected. The rocks were dated to be just 4.36 billion years old, which, despite being an epically long time, is considerably younger than previous estimates.
The lab's findings could rewrite our best guesses as to the age of our closest planetary satellite, but the theory isn't without holes. The rocks tested could simply be samples from areas that melted at some point after the formation of the Moon — meaning that they are indeed 4.36 billion years old, but the Moon itself may still be much older. Whatever the case, we probably won't know the true age of our nightly visitor until we find a way to set foot on it again, and with NASA in a holding pattern, it may be a good long time before that happens.
[via NewScientist]
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