CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — It turns out the moon is older than many scientists suspected: a ripe 4.51 billion years old.
That's the newest estimate, thanks to rocks and soil collected by the Apollo 14 moonwalkers in 1971.
A research team reported Wednesday that the moon formed within 60 million years of the birth of the solar system. Previous estimates ranged within 100 million years — from all the way out to 200 million years after the solar system's creation to not quite 4.6 billion years ago.
The scientists conducted uranium-lead dating on fragments of the mineral zircon extracted from Apollo 14 lunar samples. The pieces of zircon were minuscule — no bigger than a grain of sand.
"Size doesn't matter, they record amazing information nonetheless!" lead author Melanie Barboni of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in an email.
She noted that the moon holds "so much magic ... the key to understand how our beautiful Earth formed and evolved."
Some of the eight zircon samples were used in a previous study also conducted at UCLA. Barboni said she is studying more zircons from Apollo 14 samples but doesn't expect it to change her estimate of 4.51 billion years, possibly 4.52 billion, for the moon's age.
Read Thursday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.