China's lunar rock samples – the first moon rocks returned to Earth in more than 40 years – show lava flowed there 2 billion years ago, according to scientists.
"The number of impact craters on a surface reflects its relative age, with older surfaces having more craters. The moon is the only planetary body where impact crater ages have been calibrated with radiometric dating, so the lunar chronology is used to infer the ages of other planetary surfaces throughout the Solar System," the researchers explained. Before now, scientists had relied almost entirely on the dating of lunar samples that had been 3 billion years old or older.
"In this study, we got a very precise age right around 2 billion years, plus or minus 50 million years," U.S.-based co-author Brad Jolliff, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, ."It’s a phenomenal result. In terms of planetary time, that’s a very precise determination. And that’s good enough to distinguish between the different formulations of the chronology."Julia Musto is a reporter for Fox News Digital. You can find her on Twitter at @JuliaElenaMusto.
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