Young moon

Atheists and evolutionists would love to do nothing more than find a “home run” to prove that we live on an “old earth.” By this we mean that evolutionists claim that our “old earth” is billions of years old. But the Holy Bible states that we inhabit a “young earth” just thousands of years old. Along with this “home run” would come no need for God or the Holy Bible.

Alas, there is no such thing as a home run for the atheists and evolutionists, so they must try to build their case piece by piece, like trying to score runs one base hit at a time. They must do this partly by using evidence to state that the earth and the moon are both billions of years old. This article will look at a geologic and physical phenomenon that will show that the moon is much younger than evolutionary scientists have been teaching us.

GEOLOGIC EVIDENCE
Sometimes, findings that scientists discover actually help to point to a young universe. One such example is the recent geologic findings on the moon.

AOL reports that there is geologic activity on the moon and that it is shrinking a little, caused by internal cooling of the moon1. In fact, Thomas Watters, a planetary geologist at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. said, “These faults could be so young that they may be indicating very, very recent tectonic and, therefore, geologic activity on the moon. One of the general conceptions out there is that the moon is this geologically dead body, and that’s really not the case.”

These small faults on the moon, according to Watters, are found all over the moon. The discovery was made by a series of scientific studies, including a series of images that were sent by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (or LRO). “We know it’s shrinking by looking at these landforms called lobate scarps that kind of look like stair steps in the landscape,” Watters is quoted as saying in the article. “They’re caused by thrust faults, which are generated when the lunar crust material is pushed together and pushed up, forming a cliff or scarp.”

The Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions discovered small scarps around the equator of the moon2. But findings recently published in Watters’ journal state that 14 scarps have been discovered all over the moon. In fact, seven of these scarps were in the lunar poles. This indicates that this geologic activity is not a local event, but a global one. When you look at this information from a Biblical viewpoint, it is startling to think that a satellite that is supposedly billions of years old is still cooling down so as to cause this activity. Wouldn’t a body like the moon have cooled down by now, unless it is actually a few thousand years old, and not billions of years old?

A second interesting geologic finding involves transient lunar phenomena, or TLPs. TLPs are short lived local color changes, glowing clouds, bright spots, streaks of light, hazes and mists3. Since the 1600s, over 1,000 TLP events have been reported3. In the 1880’s, astronomer William Herschel wrote, “I perceived in the dark part of the Moon a luminous spot. It had the appearance of a red star.” Four years later Herschel wrote, “I perceive three volcanoes … The third shows signs of an actual eruption of fire, or luminous matter.

The moon has long been assumed by scientists to be very old, but other evidence discovered on the Apollo 15 mission suggests otherwise. During this mission a high amount of radon-222 was discovered, which only has a half-life of less than four days2. This gas is a product of radioactive decay, and indicates that there was a recent discharge from within the moon. Also found during Apollo missions were high readings of heat flow, which would contradict a cold crust on a billion year old moon. Certainly this shows that there is still plenty of geologic activity on a still young moon.

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
Another fascinating property of the moon that would point to its young age is the fact of a receding moon. The moon, in its orbit of earth, is actually moving away from the earth very slowly. It is estimated that the moon moves away from the earth up to 1 1/2 inches per year. That may seem like a lot to us, but when you compare inches to light years, it is almost nothing.

But if the moon has been receding at that rate over it existence, just one billion years ago, it would have been touching the earth. And our earth is supposed to be over four billion years old, so that couldn’t possibly be the case. In fact, an age of around 6000 years actually fits in much better for the age of our universe.

Another fact of physical law is the problem of the Earth’s Roche Limit5. Eduard Roche was a French astronomer who studied the effects of gravity on moons. In 1849, he was able to mathematically prove that a moon would break up into pieces if it got too close to the planet around which it revolved. This breakup happens because the gravitational pull of the planet is greater than the moon’s, and the planet’s gravity pull is stronger on the near side of the moon than the far side. The rings of Saturn are a possible real-life example of a body, or bodies, which was broken up when it encroached on Saturn’s Roche Limit.

The Earth’s Roche Limit has been measured at being 11,500 miles from the center of our planet. Since the moon is nearly 250,000 miles from our Earth’s center, it is at a distance over 20 times outside of becoming Earth’s rings. But if the Earth and moon are over four billion years old, and the moon would have been in close contact with the Earth just one billion years ago, then the moon would have actually broken up since it would have been inside Earth’s Roche Limit. Therefore, an old age for the moon is a hard, if not impossible, pill to swallow.

Finally, the earth-moon tidal friction is actually causing the earth’s rotation to slow down6. Lord Kelvin used that changing spin rate, assumed an initial molten earth, and proved that the earth could not be a billion years old, or the earth’s present shape would be different.

CLOSING
There is evidence from the world of science from the field of geology that the moon, once thought old and dead, is vibrant and alive, and much younger than earlier believed. Scientific evidence from the 17th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries actually give evidence that the moon is likely geologically young. In addition, the laws of physical science undeniably prove that the moon could not be billions of years old, as taught in textbooks, articles and documentaries. Yes, the evidence seems to point to a young earth. And the Bible has been right about that for thousands of years.