Swiss give best estimate of Moon age at 62M years after solar system formed

William Atkins
Saturday, 05 January 2008 07:41

Science - Space

A study based on tungsten isotopes has revised the age for the Moon’s formation. The Moon is thought to have been created when a giant space object hit the Earth.           

An object about the size of the planet Mars is thought by cosmologists to have impacted the Earth early in the history of the solar system. This impact caused a large piece of debris to be ejected from the Earth.

The energies from the collision caused melting on its surface and a magma ocean formed. We now call this object the Moon.

Earlier, scientists had decided that the Moon solidified its magma ocean within the first 60 million years after the solar system formed.

However, scientists at the Confederate Technical High School in Zurich, Switzerland, state that, “new data from lunar metals … point to a later date for solidification, when the Solar System was 50 to 150 million years old.”[Nature]

The paper, entitled “Late formation and prolonged differentiation of the Moon inferred from W isotopes in lunar metals,” is authored by M. Touboul, T. Kleine, B. Bourdon, H. Palme, and R. Wieler.

Thus, the solar system is believed to have formed 4.567 billion years ago. And, the Moon was created about 62 million years after the solar system formed, according to the researchers’ paper that was published in the journal Nature on December 20, 2007.

Their assessment is that 62 million years is the best estimate in a range of 52 million to 152 million years, according to measurements of tungsten (W) isotopes in lunar metals.