Where did the moon come from?

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"There is one thing that organized religion is not qualified to teach and that is an individual's purpose."-GOD

Perhpas the Moon just is.

Within the terms of my lifetime, within the terms of the span of the human species, the Moon simply is. Even the best science is but mythology; a story we are meant to believe, but have no way of knowing is true or not; mythos not logos in the true sense of the division.

And, as that true, one can prefer the myth one chooses....

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Grassaf, Eolas

The cosmologists believe that Earth, when it was still molten, was probably struck by a large meteorite, which caused a splattering that eventually came together from its molten "forms" to become our moon. This they believe occurred somewhere between 4 and 5 billion years ago.

The evidence lies in that the moon is composed of pretty much the same elements we have here on Earth, with many of those elements found in the same rough proportion we have here. Meteorites, OTOH, often have very different compositions. Also, the moon is globular, which implies that it must have formed while still in a molten state.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

The same place everything came from? In my opinion...the mind.

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May your awareness be perfection

Aye. This fits with the analysis of Moon rocks. Apparently the Moon is composed mostly of rock originating from the Earth's magma and crust but does not have a dense iron core. I am not sure how that is determined. Geologists have been able to measure the tidal marks on rocks that were on ancient shores. These indicate that the Moon, 4 billion years ago was very close to the Earth which then rotated every 4 hours. Ocean tides would have been very frequent as the geological samples indicate.

Over the past 4 billion years the Moon has been moving away from Earth in a steadily enlarging orbit. Detectors left on the Moon by Apollo 30 some years ago respond to powerful lasers on Earth that measures the distance of the Moon down to millimetres. The Moon is apparently moving steadily away about 1 or 2 cm per year. That seems slow to us short lived primates. But eventually the Moon will move so far that it may leave orbit all together into a separate planetary orbit, go out into space or into the Sun. Geophysicists speculate reasonably that loss of the Moon will destabilise the Earth's Axis causing climatic chaos and orbit the Sun by rolling and tumbling instead of spinning on an axis.

It is true that the asteroid or small planet impact is still speculative but it fits with computer models. It is also considered that the collision of the small planet resulting in the addition of its iron core to Earth's core giving Earth a heavier and more magnetic core that is necessary for life to be protected from solar radiation. It seems that a small planet the size of the Moon approached Earth and accidentally arrived at the perfect tangent to establish orbit. It would have been more likely that a wandering Moon would crash into Earth or simply miss and go on its way in its own orbit. That plus the slow movement of the Moon away from Earth (evidence based not speculation) fits better with the impact theory.

Also we note that no other small rocky planet has a large moon in our solar system.

Amergin

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Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

Our moon is also the only satellite in the solar system that has a peculiar orbit. Not only within itself but about the earth. The moon is also the perfect distance to completely block the sun during an eclipse leaving only the haze around the sun.

What of the specualtion that the moon is hollow or the theory that it is older than the earth?

Why did we stop the moon missions? Did we gather all the knowledge we ever needed to know about the moon?

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"There is one thing that organized religion is not qualified to teach and that is an individual's purpose."-GOD

People got bored. The fact was, it wasn't half as interesting the second time astronauts made it to the moon, and people quickly became blase about the whole thing. It was also a ludicrously expensive exercise to bring back a bunch of rocks that were -- except to the geeky -- pretty uninteresting in and of themselves (now unearthly glow, no fossils of moon creatures, no gold).

NASA has always been more about hype than anything else...

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Grassaf, Eolas