Earth is 30 million years older than originally estimated by researchers
our Earth is not as young as we thought. Two new studies indicate that our Earth was born 4.530 billion years ago -- about 30 million years earlier than previously suggested. The studies were conducted by researchers from University of Munster in Germany and by us-based Harvard University scientists.
The new birth year was derived through a series of complex calculations of the ratios of radioactive elements called hafnium and tungsten that are found in primitive chondrite meteorites left over from the solar system's formation. These meteorites provide a baseline for determining the age of planetary cores because they come from planetary bodies that never formed a core, says Thorsten Kleine, who led the German team.
These results were then compared with rocks from the Earth, Mars and meteorites believed to have originated on the large asteroid Vesta. The comparison showed that each was older than previous estimates. "This means that all of the planets, not just the Earth, formed much faster than we had assumed. This particularly holds true for Mars, as the rocks from this planet were analysed by us," Kleine said. The findings also push back the origin of Earth's moon because most scientists believe the moon formed from material ejected when a Mars-sized planet collided with the proto-Earth.
Geologist Alex N Halliday of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, whose 1995 research produced the figure that Earth formed about 60 million years after the solar system's birth, said his team apparently made an error in one if its measurements. "However, we do not have a clear explanation for the apparent error in our data," he said.
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