The Moon's Youngest Rocks

A Chinese Moon lander has come back with the youngest rocks yet found on the Moon. 1.97 billion year old basalt lavas, to be precise. This age is a lot younger than anyone had predicted. Where did the heat come from to produce liquid magma? Tidal heating is today's hot prediction, but nobody really knows. 

The rocks were retrieved by the Chang'e-5 mission which landed on the moon in December 2020. Read all about it HERE. 

The site for the lander was selected by counting craters! The less the crater density, the younger the surface. The age found vindicates this method of dating the relative ages of areas of the Moons surface.

Explaining the age of the lava should keep people busy for ages!

The landing site. CNSA Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, Author