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moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Mon Oct 23, 2023 10:54 am
by everything
well, this won't change your day to day life haha. maybe the "heaven qi" (via the moon) is older than we thought, as well. ;D

https://www.popsci.com/science/moon-age ... 17-sample/

The moon is our closest neighbor in space and the only celestial body humans have set foot on, yet we are still learning about it. In fact, Earth’s moon might actually be 40 million years older than scientists previously believed. By conducting an atom-by-atom analysis on crystals that were brought back by Apollo astronauts in 1972, a team of geochemists and plenary scientists now calculate that the igneous orb is at least 4.46 billion years old. The findings are described in a study published today in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters.

Intertwined fates
Based on samples recovered from the moon’s surface, we know that it formed more than four billion years ago when a giant object the size of Mars crashed into a very young Earth. The largest piece of the planet that broke off during that collision became our moon, and has been intertwined with the solar system ever since.

[Related: How old is Earth?]

“Life on Earth has evolved with the moon, and the moon has an influence on life on Earth,” study co-author and cosmochemist Philipp Heck tells PopSci. “It inspires us, which is reflected in cultural heritage, but it also has other beneficial effects like stabilizing Earth’s rotational axis.”

Heck is a curator for the meteorite collection at the Field Museum in Chicago and a professor at the University of Chicago. He says that studying the moon also helps us understand our own planet because of the topographical differences.

“Earth’s surface is much, much younger because there’s so much geologic activity [here] from volcanism and weathering,” explains Heck. “The moon’s surface is essentially an archive of solar system dynamics. This is a record that we don’t have on Earth, but our planet’s evolution is tied to these impacts that happened in the early solar system.”

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Mon Oct 23, 2023 8:03 pm
by Trick
maybe the surface dust sample of the moon are from 4.46 billion year old asteroids crashing/showering on to the moon ?

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Mon Oct 23, 2023 10:00 pm
by everything
Will have to get more moon material I guess

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 1:18 am
by Trick
The sample the US brought back is “ancient” from 1972 compared to the samples the Chinese have from 2020(how did that come back to earth?) . The Chinese sample show just 2 billion years, but that’s from the “dark side” of the moon, if that makes a difference ?……we’ll have to wait and see.

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 3:28 am
by Bao
So it's still just a little over 4.5 billion years old. How does those 40 million years change anything?

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 5:42 am
by Dmitri
Yeah 40 million is less than 1%. It's a big number, but not THAT much of a correction...

(FWIW, I stopped reading "Popular Science" a while ago... Too much "popular" in there. :) Although to be fair, "40 million years" is probably a very tempting headline anyway, for any publication.)

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 7:00 am
by everything
haha yeah

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 7:49 pm
by Trick
that moon samples show to be some 4.5 billion years shows just what to expect ? nothing really sensational.
but the samples the Chinese brought back from the never facing side to earth, that show to be at the young age of 2 billion years...that is interesting.

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2023 4:20 am
by Dmitri
Trick wrote: the samples the Chinese brought back from the never facing side to earth, that show to be at the young age of 2 billion years...that is interesting.

I wonder if that might be because the "outside-facing" part of the surface gets hit with "new" material a lot more than the part facing the Earth (i.e. the planet protecting it from majority of newer matter "updates", so the side we see roughly reflects the time it formed, but the dark side is more "fresh")?

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2023 5:04 am
by Trick
Dmitri wrote:
Trick wrote: the samples the Chinese brought back from the never facing side to earth, that show to be at the young age of 2 billion years...that is interesting.

I wonder if that might be because the "outside-facing" part of the surface gets hit with "new" material a lot more than the part facing the Earth (i.e. the planet protecting it from majority of newer matter "updates", so the side we see roughly reflects the time it formed, but the dark side is more "fresh")?

yes thats how i understand it, the moon among things kind of work as a shield.
and that it seemingly caught som ”young” matter on its
”shield” surface i think sounds interesting, from where did it come from, from some place that regenegates matter, from anywhere in our solarsystem ?
the chinese say of their moon sample it consist of very rare minerals, and even hints to seemingly ”new” to us unknown minerals.

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2023 6:46 am
by everything
"build elevator to moon and start mining for the treasure" /s

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2023 7:12 am
by Steve James
Dmitri wrote:I wonder if that might be because the "outside-facing" part of the surface gets hit with "new" material a lot more than the part facing the Earth (i.e. the planet protecting it from majority of newer matter "updates", so the side we see roughly reflects the time it formed, but the dark side is more "fresh")?


The moon only 'protects' the part of the Earth relative to its orbit. For ex., the moon would only cover 1 degree of the 360 degree arc of its orbit. Secondly, the moon is a quarter-million miles away, in linear space. The Earth is hit by material coming from all directions at all times (over the course of billions of years).

If the theories are correct, the moon was part of the Earth. Who knows if some unique part of it was broken off? Or maybe the moon contains part of what hit the Earth? Not to mention, that we don't know much about the majority of the Earth under the sea.

The Earthly matter that might most closely resemble the moon may still be below the oceans. There's a scientist who believes he's found some nodules from the ocean floor that are of alien origin. He means alien technology as well as material. Quien sabe.

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2023 7:25 am
by everything
"alien"

ah ...... now we get to the interesting part, hahaha

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2023 7:33 am
by Steve James
everything wrote:"build elevator to moon and start mining for the treasure" /s


:) If the distance from the Earth to the ISS was an inch, the moon would be 240 feet away. It would take more material to construct the elevator than would be mineable.

People (capitalists) talk about mining space all the time. The problem is that, the way capitalism works, if the people who can afford mining a diamond asteroid succeed, they won't flood the world with cheap diamonds, or gold, etc. These things are valuable because they're rare.

So, it has to be something so rare that there's no where else to get it on Earth. Then comes the logistical problems. It costs $10K for the fuel to take 1 pound (16 ozs.) of water. Well, drinking water can be recycled for a long time. Miners could be fine, and there's always robots -though they need lube.

Mining is another thing. Unless the mineral is just laying around, it'll have to be dug out. We've usually relied on water to do that too.
The elevator will also need a pipe.

Re: moon is 40 million years older than we thought

PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:49 am
by yeniseri
If we are conscious of 'being' and 'presence', we will realize that our reality is only bounded by our own creation with illusory comprehension of
oft related pronouncements that often lack 'validity'!
Per the Western calendar, our 3000 ;D year old date (history!) is nothing compared to other
non Western calendars' date of 6000 years or more keeping in mind that this is only when things began to came into being with writing, calculations and other
star orignated algebraic constellations that aided in this journey of assessment.

SO it makes sense that other than the moon, other planets are way older than we can ever imagine.