The Moon Is Even Older Than Scientists Thought

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https://eos.org/articles/the-moon-is-even-older-than-scientists-thought

By Matt Hrodey, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Thanks to one of the slowest-ticking clocks in the universe, scientists have determined the Moon is about 40 million years older than previously thought. That means the Earth was a young 100 million years old when an object about the size of Mars slammed into it, slinging magma out into Earth’s orbit. ...As the Moon’s mantle cooled, it formed tiny zircon crystals, ...sometimes contain other elements, such as uranium ...can be used to date when the crystal originally formed, going back billions of years, if necessary. ...the researchers obtained lunar dust collected by Apollo 17 in 1972 and analyzed the tiny zircon crystals and uranium contained inside. ...Radioactive isotopes of uranium (such as Uranium-238) contain unstable combinations of protons and neutrons in their nuclei and will eventually break down into lead... Scientists determined the age of the Moon by counting the proportion of lead remaining in a lunar zircon; they sharpened parts of the crystal to fine points and evaporated atoms from the tip with ultraviolet lasers. Once released, the atoms passed through a mass spectrometer that could detect their mass and thus their identity. Based on the balance they found, the researchers estimated the Moon’s age at 4.46 billion years old.... 

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