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SaltWire's Atlantic regional weather forecast for October 23, 2023 | SaltWireWASHINGTON - During the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 - the last time people walked on the moon - U.S. astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan collected about 243 pounds of soil and rock samples that were returned to Earth for further study.
The leading hypothesis for lunar formation is that during the solar system's chaotic early history a Mars-sized object called Theia slammed into primordial Earth. This blasted magma - molten rock - into space, forming a debris disk that orbited Earth and coalesced into the moon. But the exact timing of the moon's formation has been hard to nail down.
"Interestingly, all the oldest minerals found on Earth, Mars and the moon are zircon crystals. Zircon, not diamond, lasts forever," UCLA planetary scientist and study co-author Bidong Zhang added. "I see this as a great example of what the nanoscale, or even atomic scale, can tell us about big-picture questions," said study lead author Jennika Greer, a cosmochemist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
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