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Scientists Calculate the Moon To Be 4.51 Billion Years Old (go.com)
Scientists used rocks and soil collected by the Apollo 14 moonwalkers in 1971 to calculate the age of the moon. It turns out that it is much older than scientists suspected, coming in at 4.51 billion years old. ABC News reports: A research team reported Wednesday that the moon formed within 60 million years of the birth of the solar system. Previous estimates ranged within 100 million years, all the way out to 200 million years after the solar system's creation, not quite 4.6 billion years ago. The scientists conducted uranium-lead dating on fragments of the mineral zircon extracted from Apollo 14 lunar samples. The pieces of zircon were minuscule -- no bigger than a grain of sand. The moon was created from debris knocked off from Earth, which itself is thought to be roughly 4.54 billion years old. Some of the eight zircon samples were used in a previous study, also conducted at UCLA, that utilized more limited techniques. Melanie Barboni, lead author of the study from the University of California, Los Angeles, said she is studying more zircons from Apollo 14 samples, but doesn't expect it to change her estimate of 4.51 billion years for the moon's age, possibly 4.52 billion years at the most. The study was published today in the journal Science.
Giant impact theory gets bonus points.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
This will probably get me downvoted as a troll but I've begun to drown out the following: 1. New Moon Formation/Age Theory 2. New Dinosaur Extinction Theory 3. New Asteroid On Possible Future Collision with Earth Estimations 4. New Solid State Physics Miracle that Promises Amazing Possibilities 100 Years in the Future. They just seem to disappear and are never heard from again or become part of the background noise of science.
Couldn't the 4.6 billion years old stuff just have come from a 4.6 billion years old original source (say, Earth), while the moon still came into existence only, say, several hundred million years ago, having been formed out of something which perchance included that stuff?
If it asks, I say it doesn't look a day over 4 billion. After all, the moon is a harsh mistress.
Clearly it is said that God created man in his own image. Women were simply an afterthought taken from a left over spare rib. Perhaps He ran out of BBQ sauce?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Trump wants to make gay marriage illegal, I expect he will make Uranium-lead dating illegal too.
Well the God of the Bible is clearly an egomaniac, thankfully He is not the only one man has invented.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I like the current one. It's tried and tested, all the bugs have been ironed out. Not likely to cause any upsets any time soon. It ain't broke, why fix it?
Inconsistent colour, apparent size varies year to year and even month to month. Seems pretty buggy to me.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You sure he gets paid for that?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You kidding? That's one hell of an uptime! Don't you dare thinking about replacing it!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...I learned from watching "Creature From the Black Lagoon." That movie has surprisingly accurate science for a Universal monster flick. Double-checking fossil age estimates against the surrounding rock. Whoa, I didn't catch that when I was eight! The leading-man "good guy" scientist is searching for additional information about the transition from water-breathers to air-breathers in the evolutionary record for tidbits that could prove useful in adapting the human body for deep-space exploration.
If you make a cake with 4.5 billion candles, and each candle was 1 lumen; it would give off 4.5 Gigalumens.
If the full moon lights the earth with 0.1 lux (I have found several values, but this one will do) then I calculate the moon reflects the equivalent of 50 Gigalumens. This is not quite your classical lumen, which gives off light in all directions, but that's only a factor of 2.
So the cake would be 9% as bright as the full moon.