Moon's Age Accurately Guesstimated, How an Old Theory Helped Form a New One

In another new lunar discovery, scientists have estimated the moon's age with the highest amount of certainty to date.

According to Space.com, the research team has pinned the date down to within 100 million years of the solar system's formation. They have theorized the moon formed 4.5 billion years ago in a massive spatial collision.

The researchers hope their study, published in the journal Nature, will also reveal the mystery behind why the Earth and moon are apparently identical twins.

"This means that at the atomic level, the Earth and the moon are identical," study lead author Seth Jacobson, a planetary scientist at the Côte d'Azur Observatory in Nice, France, told Space.com. "This new information challenged the giant impact theory for lunar formation."

The team says the a planetary body about the size of Mars, named Theia, struck the Earth 4.5 billion years ago. The crash would melted a large part of Earth, but also created enough debris to form about 40 percent of the moon.

Jacobson said no one has been able to generate a theory to beat the collision model of the moon's formation, but what has been questioned is the Earth's similarities with it. He said his team's research could help explain those mysterious similarities.

"A late moon-forming event, as suggested by our work, is very consistent with an identical Earth and moon," Jacobson said.

Also published this week is a study on the overestimation of water on the moon. Researchers found a curious mineral called apatite that apparently gives off false water and hydrogen readings. Both studies are an example of how science is catching up the mysterious moon.

"This means that Earth and Mars formed over dramatically different timescales, with Mars forming much faster than the Earth," Jacobson said. "How can this be? Is it just a matter of size? Location? What about Mercury and Venus? Did they grow on similar timescales to the Earth or on timescales more similar to Mars? I think these are some of the really important questions that we, as a community of planetary scientists, will be addressing in the future."