Explore the surface of the Moon

Exploring the Moon's surfaceNemchin said long ago, scientists knew the existence of zircon particles on the Moon. However, after research focused on minerals during the first phase of the Moon's discovery, concerns about zircon particles have faded over the last one to two decades.

Debates about a timeline

The dating of the oldest zircon meteorite found from the Moon in 1972 helped establish the time the Moon's surface was created.

Explore on the moon.

This shocking discovery, published online recently in Nature Geoscience, has allowed a group of German, Australian and American scientists to come up with an earlier and more accurate limit to the age of the lunar surface.

Research leader, Assoc. Alexander Nemchin from Curtin University of Technology, says most people believe that the Moon is formed from a collision debris between Earth and an asteroid the size of Mars. This is about 4.5 billion years.

Assoc. Nemchin, a researcher in the Department of Applied Geology, said the temperature of a homogeneous combination in the Moon's debris led to the emergence of a deep ocean of lava. from 500 to 800km.

According to him, the cooling or crystallization of this lava ocean on the Moon has created the surface of the Moon that we see today. He said there were major arguments around the exact time of the solidification of this lava ocean.

He said: "The freezing process of lava ocean has not been determined accurately and this milestone changes in the first 250 million years of the Moon."

The cold process is very fast of the Moon

However, researcher Nemchin argues that analyzes of zircon particles can help give an accurate timeline for freezing of lava on the Moon because zircon particles are formed in the final stages of this progress.

According to Nemchin, zircon is used to accurately determine the age of geological transformation in rocks because it contains uranium, a chemical element that breaks down into lead in a defined period.

By analyzing the ratio of lead and uranium isotope in the mineral zircon found on the Moon, Nechim and colleagues determined the age of this mineral particle is about 4.42 billion years. He said this showed that the surface of the Moon was completely completed in about 100 million years.

Nemchin admits this discovery "as great as the analyzed zircon particle". He said: "If someone can find a physical material dating back much longer, we can push this timeline further. However, we know the cooling of the Moon's surface cannot be longer than 100. million years ".

Discover 'diamond'

As soon as the same research team on the oldest diamond crystal was kept inside the zircon mineral in the Jack Hills mountain range in Western Australia last year, Nemchin researcher asked NASA for permission to use the same technique. dating to Moon rocks.

He said: "In our opinion, these two projects are related to each other. We now believe that a similar lava ocean once covered the Earth. There is one thing in common at the time of the Moon's formation. When the collision with the Earth occurred, the question is whether the two lava oceans were formed as a result of the collision or did they exist before? "

Nemchin says it is important to understand in detail the Earth's evolution because it "clarifies the entire history of the planet". He said that "if we understand what happens at that time, they will understand a lot more than we know today."

NASA-supplied zircon beads were picked up by Apollo 17 when landing at the Taurus Litro site on December 11, 1972. Nemchin says the area is a "most promising" place in terms of understanding the Moon's early history.