ASITV: Don't ask how old the Moon is

Video transcript - The Moon is like an elegant old lady, who is surprisingly older than she looks. This is the new discovery made by a team of astronomers led by the University of California, revealing the age of our satellite: 4.51 billion years, much more than we thought. The result means that the date when our planet was hit by something the size of Mars, causing a colossal explosion and creating our satellite according to current theory, must have taken place farther back in time.

The new study, published in Science Advances, analysed a lunar fragment from the NASA Apollo 14 mission. Using the uranium-lead dating method, the scientists succeeded in dating this piece of Moon, which solidified 60 million years after the creation of the solar system. This result overturns previous estimates, which put the satellite's formation at 100 to 200 million years after the origin of our planetary system. Instead, it appears that the Moon was created much earlier, making it now a distinguished old lady who is more than 4 and a half billion years old.