about how old is the moon
China's Jade Rabbit rover sends back its first pictures from the Moon. 1  1/6 One of the first pictures of the lunar landscape as captured by the Jade Rabbit rover. 2  2/6 The six-wheeled Jader Rabbit rover is seent separating from the Chang'e-3 moon lander. Adblock / Adblock Plus. 1  Click the Adblock/Adblock Plus icon, which is to the right of your address bar. 2  On Adblock click Don't run on pages on this domain. 3  On Adblock Plus click Enabled on this site to disable ad blocking for the current website you are on. Earth has a mean density of 5.5 grams/cubic centimeter, but the moon has a density of only 3.3 g/cc. The reason is the same, that the moon lacks iron. The moon has exactly the same oxygen isotope composition as the Earth, whereas Mars rocks and meteorites from other parts of the solar system have different oxygen isotope compositions. Why this is a good hypothesis: 1  The Earth has a large iron core, but the moon does not. This is because Earth's iron had already drained into the core by the time the giant impact happened. Therefore, the debris blown out of both Earth and the impactor came from their iron-depleted, rocky mantles. At the time Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, other smaller planetary bodies were also growing. One of these hit earth late in Earth's growth process, blowing out rocky debris. A fraction of that debris went into orbit around the Earth and aggregated into the moon. One early theory was that the moon is a sister world that formed in orbit around Earth as the Earth formed. This theory failed because it could not explain why the moon lacks iron. A second early idea was that the moon formed somewhere else in the solar system where there was little iron, and then was captured into orbit around Earth. In the 1990's, Dr. Robin Canup wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on the moon's origin and the giant impact hypothesis, which produced new modeling of the aggregation of the debris into moonlets, and eventually, into the moon itself. Dr. Canup is continuing the modeling of the lunar accretion process. A new study has revealed the moon is 4.47 billion-years-old, after a team of planetary scientists discovered it was formed 95 million years after the birth of the solar system. A new study has revealed the moon is 4.47 billion-years-old, after a team of planetary scientists discovered it was formed 95 million years after the birth of the solar system. Ghostery. 1  Click the Ghostery icon. 2  In versions before 6.0 click whitelist site. 3  In version 6.0 click trust site or add independent.co.uk to your Trusted Site list. 4  In versions before 6.0 you will see the message Site is whitelisted. 5  Click reload the page to see your changes. Photo of the full moon, on August 21, 2013 in Nice, southeastern France. A new study has revealed the moon is 4.47 billion-years-old, after a team of planetary scientists discovered it was formed 95 million years after the birth of the solar system. This makes the Earth's moon up to 60 million years younger than some previous estimates, a study published on Wednesday found.
The moon is 4.47 billion-years-old.