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Moon Younger Than Previously Thought
TaeKwonDood writes "Analysis of a piece of lunar rock brought back to Earth by the Apollo 16 mission in 1972 has shown that the Moon may be much younger than previously believed. Researchers say that the findings allow for one of two possibilities: the moon is 200 million years younger than previously thought, or the theory that the moon used to be a molten ocean is wrong."
God just made it that way. He's God. He's makes moons however he wants.
Please, no "that's no moon" jokes this time. It's getting old. Not as old as previously thought, but still damn old.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
TFA says: Once we removed the contamination, we found that this sample is almost 100 million years younger than we expected," says researcher James Connelly of the Centre for Star and Planet Formation.
Come on /., doesn't anybody verify facts / articles anymore ??
Analysis of your post shows that both the star wars reference and "first post" were made earlier than I had originally expected, which is to say I thought the first post would be about subluxations.
Shouldn't all of the moon matter (silicon, magnesium, iron, etc.) be just as old as earth components from the previous supernova and nebula that created the solar system anyway? Most matter is fused within seconds of solar implosion and explosion. Since it is still taking meteor impacts, we could say it is perpetually new if it is a matter of age in that regard.
Lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
From the article:
The team analysed the isotopes of the elements lead and neodymium to place the age of a sample of a FAN at 4.36 billion years. This figure is significantly younger than earlier estimates of the Moon’s age that range to nearly as old as the age of the solar system itself at 4.567 billion years.
So when they say 200 million years younger, that means 4.3 byr instead of 4.5 byr. I'm sure this is interesting to those in the field, but I don't think that counts as "much younger".
It's because of all of the sun exposure.
The moon's age depends on a great many variables. For example, what do you define as being "the moon"? There was a recently discussed theory that there were actually TWO moons originally that collided at relatively low speed to form one final mass. Assuming this to be true, then this could be from either of the two "original" moons or from rock that formed in consequence of the collision. (That gives you one very large body collision, right there.)
We know that the moon did indeed have a liquid core very early on, so volcanic activity and other rock-melting levels of energy were around. They might well have lasted a few hundred million years and it's just possible that something like that could disrupt whatever calculations are being made.
With silica (a major component of the moon's surface) you can establish how long the material has been on the surface, but I don't believe that dating technique is good for timescales of billions of years and it's useless if the silica is more than a millimeter or so below the surface, which you're going to get on an object bombarded by meteorites and assorted other solar system debris. There's a variety of other techniques for directly measuring the age of materials, but I honestly couldn't tell you any that are both staggeringly accurate AND work over unimaginable timescales. Hell, most direct measurements (thermofluorescence) are damn good but still not what I'd call "staggeringly accurate" and don't work well beyond timeframes a hundred thousand times smaller than this.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I swear, officer, she told me she was 4.567 billion years old!
It is my understanding that the surface is composed of meteorites that hit long after the core formed. Dating the surface should not give you the age of the moon as a whole unless it's uniform in composition. If you do the same to date the Earth, then creationists will have plenty more fuel to support their story.
Oh, the day is correct. Now, the month, on the other hand....
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
While I can accept your believe in a God, I must say NO.
Magnets do not work through science. We know how they work through science. They work through generating an magnetic field.
Gravity doesn't work through science. Science will one day figure out how it works (at least, that's my belief). There are some theories, but science requires proof.
The sun doesn't work through science. We know it's gives light because of fusion because of science.
Scientists have admitted the previous calculations of the age of the moon were incorrect. They have given a new number which can be contested and disputed, if you provide some evidence. The conclusion you draw is (most probably on purpose) the wrongest one possible.
Science is about admitting you could be wrong, but believing you are right (based on evidence or searching for that evidence).
That's the difference between science and religion: science can be proven wrong.
Now, that doesn't prove religion to be wrong. It may be there is a God, that he created everything and that he created "proofs" of other explanations to lead men astray. But I believe that isn't the explanation. I believe science can find the explanation. In that science can be viewed as a religion, but the fundamental difference is that science can be proven wrong.
Ah, but the world is far to complex to explain in a couple of paragraphs.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Crystallization causes a zeroing of the isotopic clock. In other words, if a crystal of all potassium is formed, it will contain some potassium-40 isotopes, but no argon-40. This is used to determine when the rock was initially formed. As time passes, potassium-40 decays into argon-40 with a half life of 1.3 billion years. So, if a crystal contains a 1:1 ratio, or 50% (1 half life) potassium-40 to argon-40, the rock was formed 1.3 billion years ago. If it is 25% potassium-40 to 75% argon-40, the rock was formed 1.3 billion years ago.
Of course, the problem with this in planetary dating is that A) you have to assume the crystals were formed exactly when the planet/moon formed, which likely is not the case, since it requires, however brief, a period of cooling for the crystals to form and B) you have to find the rocks that first formed, aka, the oldest rocks.
There is also the problem of margin for error, but this is usually small enough to not really matter. If something is 4 or 5 billion years old, having a 100-200 million year margin for error is still pretty small. The other issue is to use as many of these clocks as possible to find out where they all tend to synchronize. In this case, they used lead and neodymium. And their change was no more spectacular, really, than the Shroud of Turin being dated either 1250 or 1350 AD. We can still say it was around 1300 AD (ignoring the "it caught on fire" contamination theory).
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
I8-D
Pantheists tend to be a little more tolerant; after all the gods can be wrong so hey... maybe these other people who believe in other gods could be right.
It's almost amazing how much respect a little humility can garner a person isn't it? :-)
Cool post bro, highfive \o