Scientists set age of moon at a bit younger than Earth

Most scientists agree the moon is a celestial child of Earth, blasted away from its parent by a giant impact with a Mars-sized object during the solar system’s infancy.

Now a team of European researchers says it has discovered the moon’s age, hidden in rock and soil samples retrieved by Apollo astronauts in the 1970s.

The researchers examined tungsten isotopes in the rocks and concluded the collision occurred about 30 million to 50 million years after the formation of the solar system.

That’s just a blip compared to the 4.5 billion years the Earth and solar system have existed. That means the moon is almost as old as its parent.

Heat from the impact of the large body melted much of what would become the moon, forming a gigantic magma ocean that cooled into a dense, inorganic planetoid, the researchers wrote in an article published online Thursday by the journal Science.