An international team of scientists have determined a way to find out the real age of the moon by using computer simulations and measurements of the accumulated mass taken from the Earth's interior.
This geologic clock was developed by the scientists coming from Germany, France, and United States, by running computer simulations of how Earth-like planets like Mercury, Mars, and Venus were formed out of the random space rocks travelling around the sun.
The team analyzed 259 simulations and discovered that there is a relationship between the time when the Moon was created after a Mars-like object hit the Earth, and the amount of the material added to the Earth's interior after the collision.
The moon-forming event and the data revealing the accumulation of mass in Earth after the impact could be analyzed as a clock to trace back the real age of the moon. This "geologic clock" is one of the first instruments used to determine a celestial body's age without relying on radioactive decay of atomic nuclei.
"We were excited to find a 'clock' for the formation time of the Moon that didn't rely on radiometric dating methods. This correlation just jumped out of the simulations and held in each set of old simulations we looked at," Seth Jacobson stated in a press release. Jacobson works for the Observatory de la Cote d'Azur in Nice, France
The geologic clock estimated the moon's age to be to 95 ±32 million years old after the solar system was formed. This age estimate is in agreement with radioactive nuclei estimates. However, this newly-calculated age is not in agreement with other existing age estimates for the moon. Scientists are planning to use this method to help them identify which radioactive dating measurements are the most accurate in predicting the Moon's real age.
"This result is exciting because in the same simulations that can successfully form Mars in only 2 to 5 million years, we can also form the Moon at 100 million years. These vastly different timescales have been very hard to capture in simulations," study author Dr. Kevin Walsh said in the press release.
Further details of this finding can be read in the April 3 issue of Nature.
