The moon is about 85 million years younger than we thought, new study finds

CNN — The moon is a constant in our lives. Scientists from the German Aerospace Center calculated how long it took the moon’s magma ocean – it’s a widely held belief that the lunar surface was once molten – to cool, and they estimated that the moon is actually almost 100 million years younger than previously thought – about 85 million years younger, to be exact. How the moon was made Many scientists agree on the moon’s origin story: Around 4.51 billion years ago, the Earth was still heating up and changing rapidly. All that modeling found that it took the moon nearly 200 million years to cool from its molten form and create what we now know as the lunar crust. Scientists looked to the moon’s mineral composition to estimate that the moon is around 4.425 billion years old, or 85 million years younger than what previous studies had proven.