The moon is very old. Earth’s satellite Moon is 100 million years older than what scientists had previously estimated about the Moon’s age. New research based on rocks brought from the moon’s surface suggests so. The study, published in Nature, suggests that around 4:35 billion years ago, the Moon’s surface underwent a process of ‘remelting’. which makes its rocks look much smaller than they actually are.
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What is the remelting process?
The process of ‘remelting’ occurs when the surface of a planet or moon, such as the Moon, becomes extremely hot and begins to melt. This can happen due to volcanoes or other forces inside the satellite. However, as the surface hardens again after some melting, it has the ability to make the rocks smaller than they were before. And scientists think that this melting of the moon happened about 4.35 billion years ago, due to which the real age of the moon has remained in doubt among the scientists. Scientists have changed the way they measure the age of moon rocks.
Then how old can the moon be?
The Moon formed about 4.5 billion years ago, shortly after the Solar System began, as do rare lunar minerals called lunar zircons. These models are in fact very similar to models of the early solar system. And seeing that, scientists think that most of the large objects in the solar system were formed about 4.4 billion years ago.
Also, planetary scientist Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that the Earth’s pull on the moon early in its formation could have caused large changes and a lot of heat on the moon. This may cause the ‘remelting’ process to occur and make the rocks appear younger than the Moon’s age. A similar phenomenon has been observed in Jupiter’s moon Io.
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Apart from this, it is known that China’s upcoming Chang’e 6 mission will bring lunar samples to better explore the far side of the moon. In that case, Nimmo added that if more samples of the moon are available, it will be possible to dig deeper into these findings. Future computer models will also study how tidal heating affects the moon’s geology.
