International Scientist finding Age of Moon

International Scientist finding Age of Moon

THE SECRET about when the mid-night romance under a full-blown moon night on earth began is out.

A heartening discovery by an international team of planetary scientists has revealed that the moon formed nearly 100 million years after the start of the solar system.

"We were excited to find a 'geological clock' for the formation time of the moon that did not rely on radiometric dating methods. This correlation just jumped out of the simulations and held in each set of old simulations we looked at." said an excited Seth Jacobson from the Observatory de la Cote d'Azur in Nice, France. The moon's age is defined on measurements from the interior of the earth combined with computer simulations of the proto-planetary disk from which the earth and other terrestrial planets formed.

The team of researchers from France, Germany and the LIS simulated the growth of the terrestrial planets (Mercury. Venus. Earth and Mars) from a disk of thousands of planetary building blocks orbiting the sun. By analyzing the growth history of the earth like planets from 259 simulations, the scientists discovered a relationship between the time the earth was impacted by a Mars-sized object to create the Moon and the amount of material added to lite earth after that impact.

"This result is exciting because in the same simulations that can successfully form Mars in only two to five million years, we can also form the Moon at 100 million years. These vastly different time-scalcs have been very hard to capture in simulations." explained Kevin Walsh from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) Space Science and Engineering Division.