An international team, led by the Curtin University of Technology, has analysed the mineral that they discovered from lunar samples provided by US space agency NASA, in a new study published in the Nature Geoscience journal.

According to lead author Dr Alexander Nemchin, "After the formation of the moon about 4.52 billion years ago, it experienced a brief period when its outer layer was completely molten. This molten layer is referred to as magma ocean and it's not well-known how long this layer existed on the moon.

"The zircon we discovered would have formed as the magma ocean crystallised, and suggests that the magma ocean existed for the first 100 million years of the moon's history.

"The mineral zircon is well-known for its stability and ability to precisely date geological processes in terrestrial rocks, but the discovery of zircon in the lunar samples we examined means that we can now determine the chronology of major events in the moon's evolution."

Moreover, Dr Nemchin said that understanding the time constraints related to the lunar magma ocean can also provide "important constraints" on the development of the earth-moon system to further research in astronomy.

Others who co-authored the study included Dr Thorsten Geisler from the University of Munster Institute of Mineralogy in Germany and Charles Meyer from NASA's Johnson Space Centre in the US.

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