4 ms·

As the strapline says, recent is relative in astronomical terms. For example the margin either side of it being 2 billion is 59 million years either way...

• jcelerier 5y ago
  What would be ancient then ? Because if 2B is recent, 4.5B can't be ancient, yet the moon potentially didn't even exist ?
  • lanerobertlane 5y ago
    I'm not sure there's a consensus, I expect it depends on your astronomical area of study. If you study the whole universe, than our solar system at 4.5B years old is pretty recent compared to the 14B years of the universe, so there's no ancient history of the moon. I'd say if you studied the moon, anything that happened in it's early lifetime is ancient so the protomoon and first billion years into it's existence, maybe. I guess it's similar to how people studying evolution class Humans as a recent event, but people who study humans class the the Pyramids as ancient history.
    • mr_toad 5y ago
      That’s still a seventh of the age of the universe. It’d be like a historian referring to the US war of independence as recent history.
      • rbanffy 5y ago
        In many senses we are still experiencing its effects.
  • anonnyj 5y ago
    In the infiniteness of time, 2 billion is a blink if the eye.
    • edgyquant 5y ago
      But not relative to the age of the moon it isn’t, which is what’s being discussed.