Moon is receding at a rate too fast for an old universe

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Claim

Because of tidal friction, the moon is receding, and the earth's rotation is slowing down, at rates too fast for the earth to be billions of years old.

Source

Responses

  1. This linear extrapolation is incorrect.
  2. Ignoring the case against such an extrapolation, the moon is currently receding at 3.8 cm/year and is 3.8*10^10 cm from the Earth. This allows perfectly well for a billion-year time scale.
  3. According to Kepler's laws, the lower the distance between Earth and Moon the less time it takes for the moon to orbit the Earth. This means that the Moon orbited much faster in ancient times if it was much closer to Earth. Therefore the frequency of the tides were lower, because the difference of orbit time and the time of the rotation of the earth was lower (even if rotation was faster, because the relative time change of earth-rotation is less than relative orbit time change of the moon). Energy dissipation and the drag force on the Moon are dependent on the tidal frequency and the tidal strength, but even if the tidal strength was larger due to the closer Moon, the effect of the lower tidal frequency prevailed. This simply means that the Moon receded even slower in ancient times. E.g. in the extreme case when Earth and Moon are corotating, i.e. the Moon is so close that it circles the Earth in exactly the same time as the Earth revolves, the frequency of the tides would be zero, as would energy dissipation and drag force. The Moon would not recede at all, although the tides (which would then rather be permanent deformations of the Earth, being always at the same place) would be very high because of the close Moon.
  4. The moon's recession and the Earth's slowing are perfectly consistent with them both being billions of years old. In fact, if you assume that the function is linear (it's not), you end up with an age for both Earth and the moon that is actually quite a lot older than they actually are. This is because the rate of the moon's recession and Earth's slowing spin is, itself, slowing down.
  5. add more responses

Fallacies contained in this claim

External Links

  • Mark Isaak's page for this claim [2]
  • CreationWiki's comments [3]
  • The Recession of the Moon and the Age of the Earth-Moon System [4]
  • Matson, Dave E., 1994. How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? [5]

Related claims

Acknowledgments

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