The planet we're living on is about 60 million years older than previously thought.
So
say scientists in France who studied quartz from Australia and South
Africa that dates back about 3 billion years, reports Phys.org.
The
ratio of gases in the quartz compared to today's ratios suggest both
the Earth and the moon were created about 40 million years after the
formation of the solar system, rather than the previous estimate of 100
million years afterward. That's likely when a collision happened that
left behind Earth as we know it—and formed the moon, the Huffington Post
explains.
At that time, experts think, an object the size of Mars
smashed into the predecessor of our planet, the Los Angeles Times
reports. That collision created Earth's atmosphere, while the resulting
debris formed the moon.
"The gas sealed in these quartz samples
has been handed down to us in a sort of 'time capsule,'" says a
scientist from the University of Lorraine. "We are using standard
methods to compute the age of the Earth, but having access to these
ancient samples gives us new data." (Scientists recently found evidence
in lunar rocks of that long-ago collision.)
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