Almost the entire solar sytem formed 4.6 billion years ago, about the same time as the solar nebula collapsed.
It is thought that a mars sized protoplanet crashed into the earth and the large debris from the planet cooled and formed the moon.
The collison happened well before the earth had any basis of life, and when it was a flaming ball of molten rock.
But this is still a theory of what happened.
Apollo moon landing missions turned up lunar rocks, that have oxygen isotope compositions which are almost the the same as the earth.
This states that the moon is at least 4 billion years old.
Astronomers think that the teqhnique that is used may give incorrects results and the estimates might be wrong like the age of the moon.
1 responses to How Old is the Moon?
Younger than the earth but older than us..
The earth is slowly moving away from the earth. Due to tidal drag, the moon cannot remain in a stable trajectory around the earth. There are only two possibilities: it will either fall into the earth, or move away (due to tidal drag/acceleration effects). Measurements seem to indicate that it is moving away from the earth. Now, where did the moon come from? The very near perfect circular trajectory of the moon around the earth seem to indicate that the moon did not come from far away. Either the moon came from the earth, or it was created and placed in the right position by God.
Fairly basic scientific simulation models (not even using Newtonian equations of motions) indicate that the moon must be much younger than earth. If the moon was formed by a big heavenly object (like another planet) hitting the earth, the moon still had to start moving away from the earth at a speed above the escape velocity from the earth, and it had to have additional initial speed to overcome aerodynamic drag. However, science is also teaching us about the Roche limit, according to which the moon could not have started from the earth, otherwise it would have broken up into something like the rings of Saturn. The Roche limit for the moon -- earth combination is about 18500 km (11500 miles). So, science cannot prove where the moon came from -- and also not how old it is. Scientist can guess, and propose theories, but it is not hard, proven facts, as many people believe science to be.
According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days, and using the biblical timeline (correlated with other historic data), this was about 6000 years ago. Given the accuracy of the Bible in other respects (including historical), I believe the Bible to be true in this. I do leave scope for the relativity of time though, including the effect of gravity and acceleration on time measurements, according to Einstein’s special and general relativity.
How Old is the Moon?
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