THE MOON IN OLD AGE: The moon is 40 million to 140 million years older than thought, according to new research from University of California, Los Angeles.
Using zircons -- minerals from the moon brought to Earth by the Apollo 14 mission in 1971 -- researchers determined that the moon is at least 4.51 billion years old. The study was led by Mélanie Barboni, a research geochemist in UCLA’s Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences,
Determining the age of moon rocks is difficult “because most of them contain a patchwork of fragments of multiple other rocks,” according to a news release from the university. Barboni analyzed eight zircons in pristine condition. “Specifically, she examined how the uranium they contained had decayed to lead (in a lab at Princeton University) and how the lutetium they contained had decayed to an element called hafnium (using a mass spectrometer at UCLA).”
That analysis enabled the researchers to get a handle on the moon's age.
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