Study shows that the Moon is 4.51 billion years old

A new study carried out by a research team reported that the moon is 4.51 billion years old which is way older than scientist first thought. The new estimate was determined from rocks and soil collected by the Apollo 14 moonwalkers in 1971.

According to the research team, the moon was formed within 60 million years of the birth of the solar system.

The researchers 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.

According to lead author of the research, Melanie Barboni of the University of California, Los Angeles she said;

"Size doesn't matter, they record amazing information nonetheless!"

Melanie noted that the moon holds "so much magic ... the key to understand how our beautiful Earth formed and evolved."

She and her colleagues - whose work appeared Wednesday in the journal Science Advances - are 

Melanie and her team are eager to learn more about the moon's history and, in turn, the evolution of early Earth and the entire solar system.

Apollo 11's Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell collected 92 pounds of rocks and used tubes to dig up soil while exploring the moon's Fra Mauro highlands in February 1971. They conducted two spacewalks, spending nine hours altogether out on the lunar surface.

Previous studies gave an estimate ranged within 100 million years, and then 200 million years after the solar system's creation.

Associated Press