(ORDO NEWS) — A new mathematical model developed by scientists from the German Aerospace Center and from the University of Münster, showed that our satellite is 4.425 billion years old.
One of the most common and popular theories of the formation of the moon suggests that once upon a time a cosmic body the size of Mars crashed into the Earth, that’s how the debris came together and formed the Moon. Since in those days our planet was still going through a stage of formation, becoming hotter inside, most likely, the Earth was covered with an ocean of magma.
Scientists claim that the Moon also had an ocean of magma with a depth of more than 1000 kilometers, which appeared as a result of accretion (the process of incrementing the mass of a celestial object using gravitational attraction).
“The results of our last simulation suggest that the protoplanet crashed into the young Earth about 140 million years after the formation of the solar system 4,567 billion years ago. According to our calculations, this happened 4.425 billion years ago – with an error of 25 million years, ”commented the lead author of the study, Maxim Moris.
However, the main problem previously was that scientists could not say exactly how long it took for the ocean to freeze on the moon, so the satellite’s age remained inaccurate.
In this study, the experts used a new computer model, which for the first time was able to analyze all the processes associated with solidification of magma. The results showed, “that the magmatic ocean of the moon was long-lived and it took him almost 200 million years to completely solidify.” Older models suggested that the solidification period lasted only 35 million years.
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