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58 Earth to Moon Distance
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The moon orbits the earth and its gravitational attraction is responsible for the tides in the world’s oceans. Gigantic masses of water are pushed back and forth requiring a great deal of energy. The moon supplies this energy by moving away from the earth by 4 cm each year. The earth supplies energy by rotating slower by 0.0016 seconds per day after 100 years. Even if the earth and moon had originally touched one another, this process could therefore have continued for a maximum of 1.3 billion years. This is too short for the alleged 4.6 billion year old earth/moon system.
Over a century ago, the astronomer George Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, discovered that the moon is moving away from the earth in a slow spiral. The reason for this is the mutual tide effect of earth and moon. An earth day increases by 0.0016 seconds every century and the moon moves away from the earth at a rate of 4 cm per year.
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| Although these values are small, they cannot be ignored over long periods of time. Interesting in this respect is that the tide effect shows a very pronounced function of the distance between earth and moon. For this reason, the variations must have been much greater in the past as the moon was closer to the earth, than they are today (1).
Even if the variations in the past were the same as today, the maximum period the moon could have orbited the earth is 1.3 billion years. Theoretically, 1.3 billion years ago it would have been in contact with the earth,. And one billion years ago, it still would have been so close to the earth that it would have resulted in extremely high tides. However, no one believes that this actually occurred.
Stabilization of earth’s axis:
The moon causes the tides on the world’s oceans; however, also contributes to the stabilization of the earth’s axis. Jacques Laskar found that the earth’s axis could fluctuate by up to 80 degrees if it were not stabilized by the moon with its relatively high mass. The angular position of the earth’s axis appears to be quite stable at 23.3 degrees.
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Reference:
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| (1) |
Danny R. Faulkner, The current state of creation Astronomy, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, 1998, S. 208. | |
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| (Image) http://amandabauer.blogspot.com/2007/09/under-full-moon.html |
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