The Moon Confirms a Young Universe

Just about a week ago, we hosted Astronaut Encounter 2 at the Ark Encounter with three Christian astronauts, including General Charlie Duke, who walked on the moon during the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. He was the tenth and youngest person to walk on the lunar surface, and he’s a Christian who gives God the glory for what He’s made.

(That event was a great success, everyone loved hearing from these godly men who have experienced so much and are so bold for the Lord. Enjoy these photos and a big thank-you to our event sponsor, BJU Press.)

On this International Moon Day, I thought I’d highlight how the moon confirms a young universe, like the Bible teaches, not a supposed billions-of-years-old one.

Every year, it drifts about an inch and a half further away from us due to gravitational forces involved with the tides.

Did you know the moon is actually moving away from earth? Every year, it drifts about an inch and a half further away from us due to gravitational forces involved with the tides. Interestingly, measurements and data from the Apollo missions gave us this precise recession rate. And this rate gives a maximum age for our earth-moon system (and spoiler, it’s not billions of years!).

You see, an inch and a half isn’t much over the course of a few millennia (in the 6,000 years that’s passed since day four of creation week, the moon has moved less than 1,000 feet) . . . but the moon is supposed to be 4.5 billion years old. Over that amount of time, an inch and a half a year adds up! It adds up so much that if we extrapolate this recession rate back into the past, the moon would’ve been touching the earth just 1.5 billion years ago. And that doesn’t match with lunar origin stories or the scientific data (the moon couldn’t be that close to earth without our gravitational forces destroying it).

Of course, rescuing devices have been proposed, but they all fail for one reason or another (you can read this article to learn more). The truth is that our moon displays the glory of God and confirms exactly what we’d expect starting with Scripture: It’s not billions of years old.

And our moon is not the only one out there. Other planets in our solar system also have their own moon or moons, and like our moon, these celestial objects also confirm the Bible’s history. You can learn more about them in this article, “To the Moons and Back.”

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.