Miguel A. Lopes / EPA
“Intense warming episode”. New study points out that the formation of the Moon, in a collision between the primitive Earth and a protoplanet the size of Mars, may have occurred after all around 4.51 billion years ago.
A study out Wednesday in Nature and led by the University of California at Santa Cruz proposes a new theory that Earth’s natural satellite may have suffered a intense heating episode and with that a “reformulation” that hid his true age.
The chronology of this accident was calculated by dating samples of rocks supposedly crystallized in the magma ocean that existed after the impact, which puts the age of the Moon at about 4.35 billion yearsthat is, he was born around 200 million years after the formation of the solar system.
A dating that does not convince all scientists, because at that time most of the debris from the early days of the solar system had already been absorbed by larger bodies and a massive collision that would form the Moon would be unlikely.
The new research suggests that the satellite’s formation occurred between 4.430 and 4.53 billion years ago, at the upper limit of previous age estimates, helping to align understanding of the Moon’s formation with existing knowledge about the formation of terrestrial planets.
The team led by Francis Nimmofrom the University of California, hypothesizes that 4.35 billion years ago there would have been a “refusion” event driven by the orbital evolution of the Moon, which would have readjusted its geological clock and its apparent age. This process could explain the frequent appearance of 4.35 billion-year-old lunar rocks, such as those collected by the American Apollo mission and others.
This “remelting” was due to the fact that the Earth’s tidal pull caused widespread geological disturbances and intense warming, after which “no rocks should be found anywhere on the Moon that are significantly older” than 4.35 billion of years, Nimmo pointed out.
Tidal heating is a process in which gravitational forces between two celestial bodies cause internal friction that results in intense heating. In the case of the Moon, this effect was probably most pronounced early in its history, when it was closest to Earth.
The applied models indicate that during certain periods of its early years, the Moon’s orbit would have been unstable, causing it to experience Earth’s intense tidal forces that could have led to significant episodes of warmingdrastically altering its geology.
Another recent study, published in Earth & Planetary Science Letters and reported by ZAP this Thursday, also points to the possibility of bacia do Polo Sul-Aitkenthe oldest and largest lunar crater, is even bigger than scientists thought.
“This means that astronauts in the Artemis program or robots in the region of the lunar south pole may be able to study in detail rocks deep in the lunar crust or mantle — materials that would otherwise be impossible to access,” he added.
The Chang’e 6 mission this year 1.9 kilograms of rock from the far side of the Moon, specifically from this crater, the South Pole-Aitken basin. Recent research reveals that the far side of the Moon was also volcanically active and that it is poor in potassium, rare earth elements and phosphorus, unlike the visible side.
