It turns out the moon is a little younger than scientists previously thought — about 85 million years younger, to be precise.
In a new study, researchers at the German Aerospace Center found out that, not only did the moon once have a massive, fiery magma ocean, but our rocky satellite also formed later than scientists previously expected.
Billions of years ago, a Mars-size protoplanet smashed into the young Earth and, amid the debris and cosmic rubble, a new rocky body formed — our moon. In this new work, the researchers reconstructed the timeline of the moon’s formation. While scientists have previously thought that this moon-forming collision happened 4.51 billion years ago, the new work pegged the moon’s birth at only 4.425 billion years ago.