China Samples Find Young-ish Volcanic Rocks on Moon
An analysis of basaltic lava rocks returned from the Moon by China’s Chang’e-5 mission reveals volcanism only two billion years ago.
Last week, we talked about some early results from the analysis of lunar samples brought back by China’s Chang’e-5 mission which revealed that about 10% of those rocks were not from the landing site in Oceanus Procellarum. That landing site is basically known to be solidified lava near an ancient volcanic eruption. But while those so-called exotic rocks are interesting, today we’re going to talk about the ones that actually originated in the landing site instead.
In a new paper published in the journal Science, researchers report that the basaltic lava found in Oceanus Procellarum is only two billion years old. Yes, that’s billion with a ‘B’, and yes, the usage of “only” is correct here. We know the Moon is the same age as the Earth. We think we understand how it formed and how it ended up in Earth’s orbit, although the details keep being refined as we learn more. So while we can say with some certainty that Earth was hit by a Mars-sized body we call Theia, at least once, shearing off Earth’s materials and mixing together to solidify into the Moon and part of Earth, all of that still happened about four and half…
