Moon same age as earth, or older.

Well i've had a decent look for threads on this topic but can't seem to find it.
I've always come across the fact that the moon is about the same age as the earth.
The moon is apparently alot stranger than most people think. If you're to believe alot of the little known 'facts' floating around about it.

Such as -

Weird Orbit: Our moon is the only moon in the solar system that has a stationary, near-perfect circular orbit. Stranger still, the moon's centre of mass is about 6000 feet closer to the Earth than its geometric centre (which should cause wobbling), but the moon's bulge is on the far side of the moon, away from the Earth. "Something" had to put the moon in orbit with its precise altitude, course, and speed.

Moon 'facts'

Anyway, heres a few sources stating the moons age.
phils.com
abc online discussion

Okay, age of the earth
4.5-4.56 billion years. Not 'over' but that figure.
yahoo answers
wiki
Age of the moon

Researchers from Oxford University and the Universities of Cologne and Muenster have determined the moon is 4.527 billion years old.

ananova.com

okay what?! So it's the same age as the earth, if not slightly older.

We do not know if the Moon was made mostly from Earth materials or mostly projectile, the kinds of chemical reactions that would have taken place in the melt-vapor cloud, and precisely how the Moon was assembled from this cloud.

Physics.edu

We're not even sure how it was made really.

i don't really see how pre-existing oceans when impacted by a rouge planet would then "float for millions of years" and then rain down. i don't see it. i see instead this water being vaporized and violently and ejected into space and lost --as other atmospheres of other planets are believed to have suffered the same fate, with differing atmospheric traits and cataclysms --yet are all attributed to be lost to space-- not retained.

if the moon is really over 4.5BY old, that puts it on par with the age of the earth, perhaps, lessening the chances of it being younger than the earth. as i read, i felt then the earth/moon system is pretty much the same age. this makes me have less faith in an impact with mars-sized planet idea.

uplink space forum

Anyway, I find it all really curious considering the ages of other moons.
It's been hard to track down the ages of other moons but heres what I've found..

Saturns moon Enceladus - 'planetary scientists have been intrigued by the moon's wrinkled terrain and smooth plains, some of which appeared to be relatively free of impact craters. Smooth, crater-free surfaces on moons and planets indicate geologically young ages, while wrinkles may indicate tectonic activity or volcanism' ( Oops I closed the link and lost it )

Saturns moon titan -
moon may be young
lack of craters

Jupiter - Europa
They're not sure
Ganymede 4 billion
Callisto They haven't counted the craters yet - can't find a recent update on this moon. But it's safe to say it's old.

Its getting late and im getting sick of trying to find other moons with the same age as earths moon.

So can someone help me on this.
Are there any moons on other planets that formed at the same time as those planets themselves?
If the moon was formed by something hitting the earth, and breaking off a chunk of it, and managed to keep it in orbit here, what kind of state was the earth in at that time? Was it a ball of gas still, or a ball of lava?
How is it possible that anything 'the size of mars' could hit the earth at that time in its weak state and not totally destroy it?

And okay, if the moon is a piece of the earth there would be a big chunk of earth missing. There wouldn't be a chunk missing if it was still mouldable at that time I guess, as the rotation might have smoothed it out or something. But if it was mouldable at that time woudln't it have just been destroyed pretty much?

I assume if there wasnt a moon, there woudln't be life on this planet? Are we that lucky?

First of all, there are lots of different isotope ratios, and diffrernt scientists have their favorite. One study of a given ratio is not definitive. There is lots of good evidence that the moon is a little younger than the Earth.

Second, the moon's orbit is not stationary in any meaningful sense. there is nothing weird about the moon's orbit. It is pretty much what you would expect and where you would expect for an object formed by a collision.

Third, a small offset between the moon's barycenter and geometric center just means that its mass is not symmetrically distributed. This is certainly interesting, but no evidence at all for an artificial origin.

I personally believe that the Sumerians had the right idea about our moon. It may have very well been a portion of the earth at some point in time. Most likely there was some cataclysmic event which "cleaved" the earth in its early formation.

Im not satisfied with those answers

Actually, the thing I want to know the most is what form the earth was in when this collision was supposed to have happened.

Originally posted by T0by


Actually, the thing I want to know the most is what form the earth was in when this collision was supposed to have happened.

I would think that it would be in the early stages of the formation of the earth. There are not huge gaps missing from our planet, so it most likely wasn't after the earth was completely formed, but during the process of the earth being formed.

Hazarding a guess, but I'd say Earth was still pretty hot. The crust would have been very thin, and mostly made of igneous rock. She was constantly being bombarded by all the other smaller hunks of rock flying all over the place. There were probably a few moons on some days, and none on others as they would collide with other rocks wandering around the solar system.

It probably doesn't really matter too much what the details are behind the Moon. It either managed to stay put after getting blasted free by one of the fairly often major impacts, coalesced from smaller chunks that managed to stay put after getting blasted free by the extremely frequent large impacts, or is just captured. At the time it would have all been the same stuff anyway.

To be honest, my interest in the history of the moon is along the lines of....
If life on this earth is special, and even possibly monitored by other beings, then were there any additions to the earth to make it 'special' and more inhabitable? ( eg. the moon )
It would only make sense or be of interest if you believe we may have been seeded from elsewhere, but i admit it's abit of a stretch

I have heard it numerous times, and wanted to learn abit more.

I still don't understand how an early earth could take that impact and not have its orbit totally screwed, or be destroyed alltogether.

I saw an episode on the science channel about the history of our moon. What may have happened was that an object the size of our earth or larger collided with earth and the debris from the collision is what formed the earth, in short. I'll see if I can find that information.

science.discovery.com... 81.63633.0.0Heres and episode coming up on the science channel about if we did not have a moon or the collision never happened. This is not the show that I saw before.

It may not have been a collision. Perhaps a massive body came very close to the young, hot, molten proto-Earth, and the tidal forces could have stretched the planet until a chunk had been dislodged from the main mass.

This would happen in much the same way that comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke up into smaller chunks as it hurdled toward Jupiter. The comet had a long way to go 'til it reached the outer atmosphere, but the tidal forces stretched it and broke it into bits.

I dunno.

Originally posted by T0by
I still don't understand how an early earth could take that impact and not have its orbit totally screwed...

It probably did. Could have even put us on our tilted axis.

Any of it would be pure speculation.

Accretion, bombardment, splitting impact.

The real fact is. We will never know.

Just like those who say that the asteroid belt didn't form a planet because of Jupiter.

It could have been a destroyed planet in any number of ways your imagination is the only limit.

Of course, now, there isn't much debris left ... but who knows how, when, what happened?

You could even go as far into speculative theory as this wonderful tidbit:

The inner planets were formed by a massive impact of two bodies in the area of the asteroid belt. The impact splitting the larger of the two gives us Venus, Earth, and Mars ... the remnants from the second body leaves the asteroid belt and many comets/planetoids, the moon and Mercury.

Or, a collision with the 'missing' planet could have created the earth and mars, with the remnants of the asteroid belt and the anomalies of our moons. We, in all possibility may have had smaller moons as well, much smaller. This could have been some of our major asteroid events (like the 300km crater in Africa) It may have been struck and split up.

Prove me wrong

I am just stressing the point, short of a time machine, or another life form that witnessed and documented it ... there is no truth to any theory. There never can be.

We have a lot of so-called anomalies in our solar system regarding axis, rotation, revolution, atmosphere, composition, moons, and things beyond the documented bodies.

I don't trust the dating systems at all. Guesses backed up by more guesses.

The moon-ship theory is just as plausible ... since it has 60% earth's density, it could be hollow.

I like the expanding planets and moon theory ... which still doesn't answer the question of how the moon got there.

A lucky catch ... man, I wish the earth would give me some lotto numbers! Unless it was all used up at that time.


An impact ... to really get into your last questions. We are assuming that if the earth was hit, it was in this orbit to begin with. Remember, we need to clear out minds of all we have learned to find the answers sometimes. All assumptions need to be dropped to consider this, since the physics are beyond our daily scope of reality.

Let's say, the earth was in a different orbit. We think our current orbit changes slightly. So, it could have been hit and knocked into a similar one as now, but slowly stabilizing over the years. If the earth was 'gooey' it may have happened this way.

I still find it a stretch. I like the idea T.S. came up with a lot, but even the best theories has its flaws. Where is that massive body now, that was able to rip a molten earth apart?

I will agree with you ... it does seem placed here. by all means, it looks different than the other planetary bodies. It holds up better to major impacts than earth. It just seems odd.

We could always hope to figure it out or have aliens be real and disclose it all to us ... we can keep speculating until then.

Originally posted by FreeThinkerIdealist

I like the expanding planets and moon theory ... which still doesn't answer the question of how the moon got there...

... A lucky catch ... man, I wish the earth would give me some lotto numbers! Unless it was all used up at that time.

I know its not something that most of the people will find possible by any means but as my basic view of how everything works out there I can go ahead and spew my views on how moon got there. Its quite simple actually once you get over the big bang theory and how everything was made billions of years ago in our solar system and they have been the same ever since.

If you consider the possibility that everything in the universe is growing you come to the conclusion that theres no way everything can grow at the same speed by any means as it all depends on the activity of the planet, star, solar system or galaxy in question. So its not such a big leap to understand how the center of mass of a moon that is closely orbiting a planet with gravitational forces ripping on its surface, the same way moons forces are ripping ours, only alot more due to the mass difference. As its growing even though alot slower than the earth, as its always facing the same direction, the growing matter from the inside grows towards earth, just like plants that grow towards the sun.

If we go abit more out there than the first part we can start to see how the orbital paths around the sun must be changing if everything keeps growing in both mass and size. It becomes fairly obvious how something like our moon could have come to circle around us as our orbits at some point have come close enough to start affecting each other more than the sun. And the moon, being the smaller of the two at the time, starting to orbit around us. Earth simply grew at different speed than the moon and our orbits grew/shrunk together and formed the situation we see now.

That is ofcourse just my personal view and theory.

[edit on 13/8/07 by Gonjo]

Gonjo I think you explained the growing planets well, Though I think some of it has to do with the internal forces with no respect to an outside body, but, the sun and the moon do play a role with our planet ... as well as our core that is quite active as far as we can tell, imo.

I don't think I will ever believe in the 'big bang' though.

I believe in the theory of different membranes hitting each other and creating a new reality as a 'big bang' more than a super massive particle explodes into everything we can see and not see, feel and not feel.

I honestly think it is more complex than most can fathom. Infinitely small and large, existence mimics itself ... as we see atoms so is our solar system. We are the quarks and such of the nucleus, neutrons, protons, electrons ... to simplify it to the maximum amount.

I think when we can fully grasp atomic matter, which I think we are very far away from even though it may not seem so to most ... that will help us come to understand our larger systems and use them for power and transport.

How does this relate to the topic? If we understand completely how to control atomic forces, and put that to use in the larger scale. We could easily manipulate a small body such as the moon, or even build one. Traveling through the galaxy will be like driving on vacation. While there would be still more to learn, we would be doing things that are not believable at this time and restrictive thinking.

Originally posted by FreeThinkerIdealist
I don't think I will ever believe in the 'big bang' though.

I believe in the theory of different membranes hitting each other and..

Oh yeah im sorry if my thoughts I spewed out were not clear, I have no belief in the big bang theory. I was trying to point out its something we need to leave behind and move towards theories that dont have holes the size of multiple universes in them.

I believe the universe is in constant state of growth and expansion from within everything with enough mass to create its own core for it. But yeah thats abit off topic, just wanted to clear up any mistakes due to lack of sleep during my last failed attempt to bring my views out in the open.