https://www.npr.org/2024/12/18/nx-s...-35-billion-heres-the-moons-anti-aging-secreta study in the journal Nature argues for the earlier age, saying that the ancient Moon also went through a period when it got hot and partially remelted, producing new rocks about 4.35 billion years ago.
Astronomers have long known that the Earth and Moon are younger than 4.6 billion years, because that's when the solar system got its start.
A huge cloud of dust and gas collapsed inward, forming a new star. Leftover clumps of matter started crashing into each other, glomming together and gradually building up planets.
During this chaotic time, an object the size of Mars smashed into the proto-Earth.
"It would surely have been spectacular," says Nimmo. "It was just so energetic that it's really hard for us to conceive of what it must have looked like."
The last giant impact on Earth is thought to have formed the Moon1. The timing of this event can be determined by dating the different rocks assumed to have crystallized from the lunar magma ocean (LMO). This has led to a wide range of estimates for the age of the Moon between 4.35 and 4.51 billion years ago (Ga), . . . . Here we argue that the frequent occurrence of approximately 4.35-Ga ages among lunar rocks and a spike in zircon ages at about the same time is indicative of a remelting event driven by the Moon’s orbital evolution rather than the original crystallization of the LMO.
On 25 June, Li Chunlai watched eagerly as a capsule carrying the first pieces of the far side of the Moon landed on Earth. “Sample, I finally got you,” he thought, as if speaking to an adversary he had spent years trying to outwit.
That moment capped decades of hard work for Li, deputy chief designer for China’s Chang’e-6 mission, which blasted off to the Moon on 3 May. The 3,200-kilogram lander — about as heavy as a pickup truck — spent two days drilling and scooping material on the lunar surface before sending the samples back to Earth.