R. Joel Duff wrote:
> "Lunar laser-ranging experiments regularly measure the earth-moon distance
> to within a few centimeters,12 and it is notices that the separation is
> presently increasing by several centimeters per year. The rate (in italics)
> of separation, however, based on uniformitarian extrapolation, is
> decreasing; the rate of separation is assumed to have been greater in the
> past.13 At the same time the length of the earth's day is increasing by
> about 0.002 seconds per century, both effects being due to the tidal forces
> between the earth and the moon. Even this slow rate of tidal dissipation
> of energy is extremely large when compared with the fission theory and its
> assumed separation is extrapolated backward in time, the moon would have
> been "very near" the earth less than two billion years ago! Baldwin
> explains the situation this way:
>
> ""Jeffrey's (sic) early studies of the effects of tidal friction yielded a
> rough age of the Moon of 4 billion years. Recently, however, Munk and
> MacDonald have interpreted the observations to indicate that tidal friction
> is a more important force than had been realized and that it would hav
> taken not more than 1.78 billion years for tidal friction to drive the Moon
> outward to its present distance from any possible minimum distance. This
> period of time is so short, compared with the age of the earth, that
> serious doubts have been cast upon most proposed origins and histories of
> the moon.14""
>
> Allen Hammond, using slightly differnet intitial conditions, concludes that
> the current rate of separation of the earth-moon system implies an initial
> separation less than on billion years ago.15 This is long after the date
> given to the youngest rocks found on the moon (see p. 92)."
>
> 12 Taylor, Lunar Science: A post-Apollo View, p. 3.
> 13. B. J. F. MacDonald, "origin of the moon: dynamic considerations,:" The
> Earth-Moon System, edited by B. G. Marsden and a. G. W. Cameron
> [prodeedings of an international conference, Jan. 20-21, 1964] (New York:
> Plenum Press, 19660 p. 185
> 14. Baldwin, A fundamental survey of the Moon, p. 40.
> 15. Hammond, "exploring the solar system (III): whence the Moon?" 911.
>
> My fingers hurt now so I'll quit.
>
> Joel
>
> ,-~~-.___.
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