Scientists believe moon is 40 million years older than first thought

UPI ^ | OCT. 23, 2023 AT 12:00 PM | By Simon Druker

[Dogbert41]

Sure. 6,000 tops.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

LED’s. (You realize that half the moon is illuminated at any moment.) The moon always has the same face towards the earth but rotates with respect to the sun. A solar day on the moon is the same duration as a lunar month on earth, 29.53 earth days. When the earth sees a full moon, the moon sees a new (dark) earth, and vice versa.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Science is a collection of facts, observations, measurements, and theories or hypothesis to explain what we are seeing.

[PIF]

Others have put the date at over 6 B years

[1_Rain_Drop]

Considering how much older the moon is... I’d say, it has held its shape quite well.

[Red Badger]

Still it’s bulging slightly around the middle.................

[1_Rain_Drop]

why does the moon on the left look like a peeled orange?
The moon on the right looks like a photo taken from a microscope. It looks very flat. One would expect the edges to show curvature.

[Flying Circus]

These scientists seem to think they know the age of the moon with a lot more precision than I would have thought. Clearly, they have not been accurate in their estimates to date. I would think they might save themselves future embarrassment by being less precise when looking at things so far away in both time and space.

[Seruzawa]

They write this stuff for each other. This is about publishing something.... anything. It makes them look like they are doing something. Then they argue with each other endlessly.

[Delta 21]

And you wonder why we dont trust you!

Thats just too big a margin of error. Oh, you made that up too, didnt you?

[jagusafr]

Yeah, just another “gotta push back the date to make our preconceived notions work” day at the office.

[RetiredTexasVet]

So what? More birthday candles required?

[Libloather]

[Rockingham]

A rounding error or other flaw is unlikely. In the study, a new and more precise method was used to extract uranium and lead from crystals of zircon in Moon rocks. In essence, a laser was used to ablate the crystals, atom by atom, with each atom then measured as to weight in order to determine its element and isotope. The ratio of lead to uranium tells when the crystal was created, based on the known and unalterable slow radioactive decay of uranium into lead making for a reliable clock on a geologic scale.

[Colt1851Navy]

Do we get some sort of refund?

[ChessExpert]

Thanks for the revelation. (sarc.)

[x]

I’m not saying anything until I see the birth certificate ...

The original long form one ...

[minnesota_bound]

I thought the moon looked more grey.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Sorry, it was a half-finished thought, that, to paraphrase Cole Porter, would have been better left unexpressed. My objection is to the tendency to apotheosize science, which the comment I was responding to was tending towards. But, yes, your comment was well-deserved.

[ChessExpert]

I’ve done it too. :)