Moon's Crust Might Hold Secrets To Sun's Ancient History

A team of astrophysicists has found that Moon comprises of clues that could help unravel the ancient mysteries of the Sun and are crucial to understanding the development of life. The Moon took shape when a Mars-sized object collided with or planet around 4.5 billion years ago.

"The Earth and Moon would have formed with similar materials, so the question is, why was the Moon depleted in these elements?" questioned Rosemary Killen, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre.

The scientists suspect that the history of the Sun can be understood through Moon's crust.

"We didn't know what the Sun looked like in its first billion years, and it's super important because it likely changed how Venus' atmosphere evolved and how quickly it lost water. It also probably changed how quickly Mars lost its atmosphere, and it changed the atmospheric chemistry of Earth," explained Prabal Saxena, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard.

The computer simulations made by the team shows that the early Sun rotated 50 percent slower than the baby stars. The team estimates that for the first billion years, the Sun to around 9-10 days to complete one rotation.

"Space weather was probably one of the major influences for how all the planets of the solar system evolved," Saxena said. "So any study of habitability of planets needs to consider it," he added.

Another study suggests that the Sun continues to burn through its resources and getting hotter every passing day. This will eventually make the Earth uninhabitable. This will happen because the sun already has a surface temperature of 5,505 degrees Celsius and its core might reach up to temperatures of 15 million degrees Celsius.

The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the solar system's mass, but this mass is being used up, causing our host star to expand and produce more heat in a process called nuclear fusion. The hydrogen atoms on the Sun are compressed under pressure and fuse together producing large amounts of energy in the form of heat.