The crescent Earth rises above the lunar horizon in this undated NASA handout {photograph} taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft in lunar orbit throughout the last lunar touchdown mission in the Apollo program in 1972.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
During the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 – the final time individuals walked on the moon – U.S. astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan collected about 243 kilos (110.4 kg) of soil and rock samples that had been returned to Earth for additional research.
A half century later, crystals of the mineral zircon inside a coarse-grained igneous rock fragment collected by Schmitt are giving scientists a deeper understanding concerning the moon’s formation and the exact age of Earth’s celestial companion.
The moon is about 40 million years older than beforehand thought – forming greater than 4.46 billion years in the past, inside 110 million years after the photo voltaic system’s start, scientists stated on Monday, based mostly on analyses of the crystals.
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The main speculation for lunar formation is that throughout the photo voltaic system’s chaotic early historical past a Mars-sized object referred to as Theia slammed into primordial Earth. This blasted magma – molten rock – into area, forming a particles disk that orbited Earth and coalesced into the moon. But the precise timing of the moon’s formation has been laborious to nail down.
Mineral crystals had been capable of kind after the magma cooled and solidified. The researchers used a way referred to as atom probe tomography to verify the age of the oldest-known solids that shaped after the enormous affect, the zircon crystals contained in the fragment of a kind of rock referred to as norite collected by Schmitt.
“I love the fact that this study was done on a sample that was collected and brought to Earth 51 years ago. At that time, atom probe tomography wasn’t developed yet and scientists wouldn’t have imagined the types of analyses we do today,” stated cosmochemist Philipp Heck, senior director of analysis on the Field Museum in Chicago, a University of Chicago professor and senior creator of the research revealed in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters.
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“Interestingly, all the oldest minerals found on Earth, Mars and the moon are zircon crystals. Zircon, not diamond, lasts forever,” UCLA planetary scientist and research co-author Bidong Zhang added.
The rock containing the zircon was collected in the Taurus-Littrow valley on the southeastern fringe of the lunar Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity) and saved at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“Zircons are very hard and tough and survive the breakdown of rocks during weathering,” Heck stated.
A research led by Zhang revealed in 2021 used a method referred to as ion microprobe evaluation to measure what number of atoms of uranium and lead had been in the crystals, calculating the age of the zircon based mostly on the decay of radioactive uranium to guide over time. That age wanted to be confirmed by way of one other methodology due to a possible complication involving lead atoms if defects existed in the zircon crystal construction.
The new research used atom probe tomography to find out there have been no issues involving the lead atoms, confirming the age of the crystals.
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“I see this as a great example of what the nanoscale, or even atomic scale, can tell us about big-picture questions,” stated research lead creator Jennika Greer, a cosmochemist on the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
The moon, which orbits Earth at a median distance of about 239,000 miles (385,000 km), has a diameter of about 2,160 miles (3,475 km), a bit greater than 1 / 4 of our planet’s diameter.
“The giant impact that formed the moon was a cataclysmic event for Earth and changed Earth’s rotational speed. After that, the moon had an effect on stabilizing Earth’s rotational axis and slowing down Earth’s rotational speed,” Heck stated. “The formation date of the moon is important as only after that Earth became a habitable planet.”
“The moon helps stabilize Earth’s axis for a stable climate,” Zhang added. “The moon’s gravitational pulls help shape the ocean’s ecosystem. The moon is inspirational to human cultures and explorations. And NASA and other space agencies see the moon as a steppingstone for future deep-space explorations.”
