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The Moon Could Be 100 Million Years Older Than We Thought

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Researchers have discovered that the moon might be older than we thought—by 100 million years.

A new study published in the journal Nature has challenged scientists’ beliefs about the moon’s age. Based on the age of lunar rock samples from Apollo missions, experts have previously estimated the moon was around 4.35 billion years old. However, rather than the moon forming that many billions of years ago, the new study suggests that the lunar surface actually “remelted” during that timeframe. 

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“You can’t necessarily use the ages recorded by rocks to tell when the moon formed,” study lead author Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz, told Space.com.

“So the moon rocks are not telling us when the moon formed, but they are telling us when a later event happened that heated the moon,” he added, per NBC News.

Instead, scientists estimate the moon to be 4.51 billion years old—about 100 million years older than we thought. That’s a pretty major discovery.

How Old is the Moon Really?

According to Space.com, the remelting that occurred some 4.35 billion years ago was likely caused by Earth’s gravitational pull and tidal effects on the moon. These were much stronger than they are today, as the moon is further from the Earth than it was when it first formed.

“We’re not really upending conventional wisdom so much as reconciling dueling hypotheses,” Nimmo explained to Space.com. “The dynamicists want an ‘old’ moon and the geochemists want a ‘young’ moon. Our suggestion can satisfy both.”