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The Moon Is More Than 4 Billion Years Old — Plus Other Lunar Facts

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The Moon Is More Than 4 Billion Years Old — Plus Other Lunar Facts Science & Math The moon is more than 4 billion years old — plus other lunar facts Image 1. The moon is about 238,900 miles from Earth. Photo by Chris Cook/Science Source By National Geographic, adapted by Newsela staff Published:11/10/2019 ​ How did the moon form? Why do we only see one side of it? Why does the lunar day last one Earth month? Scroll down for the answers and other interesting facts about the moon. Small Moons May Have Formed Earth's Moon How did the moon form? According to the "giant impact" theory, the young Earth had no moon. A rogue planet struck the Earth and instantly, most of the rogue planet and a sizable chunk of Earth were vaporized, or converted into vapor. The cloud of vapor rose to an altitude of 13,700 miles, where it condensed into countless solid particles that orbited the Earth. The solid particles collected into ever-larger moonlets — small moons — that eventually combined to form the moon. By measuring the ages of moon rocks, we know that the moon is about 4.6 billion years old, which is about the same age as Earth. The distance between the Earth and its moon averages about 238,900 miles. The moon's diameter is 2,160 miles. The moon's mass is the amount of matter that it contains, and it equals about one-eightieth of the Earth's mass. The Moon Causes High And Low Tides On Earth Gravity is a pulling force that works across space. Objects do not have to touch each other for gravity to affect them. The force of gravity at an object's surface — its surface gravity — is the result of the object's mass and size. The surface gravity of the moon is only one-sixth that of the Earth. The force that gravity exerts on a person determines the person's weight. Your mass would be the same on Earth and the moon. However, you would weigh about one-sixth as much on the moon. That means if you weigh 132 pounds on Earth, you would weigh about 22 pounds on the moon. The moon's gravitational pull on Earth is the main cause of Earth's tides. The moon's gravitational pull causes two bulges of water on Earth's oceans. One bulge is where ocean waters face the moon, and this is where the pull is strongest. The other bulge is where ocean waters face away from the moon, and that is where the pull is weakest. Both bulges cause high tides. As the Earth rotates, the bulges move around it. One always faces the moon. The other is directly opposite. The combined forces of gravity, the Earth's rotation and other factors usually cause two high tides and two low tides each day. Why The Moon's Shape Changes The moon's rotation — the time it takes to spin once around on its axis — takes about 27.3 days. That's the same amount of time the moon takes to complete one orbit around the Earth. This means the moon's rotation is timed so the moon shows the same face to the Earth at all times. Half of the moon always faces us while the other always faces away. The moon's far side has been photographed only from spacecraft. The moon's shape appears to change in a repeating cycle when viewed from the Earth. That's because the amount of lighted moon we see depends on the moon's position in relation to the Earth and the sun. We see the full moon when the sun is directly behind us, shining on half of the moon. The new moon — when the moon is darkened and we cannot see it — occurs when the moon is almost directly between Earth and the sun. As a result, the sun's light shines only on the far side of the moon. The moon orbits the Earth at an average speed of 2,300 miles an hour. The "Man In The Moon" The moon's surface bakes in the sun for two weeks at a time, reaching up to 243 degrees Fahrenheit. The moon's day lasts about a month. Then, for an equal period, the same spot is in the dark. The dark side cools to about -272 degrees Fahrenheit. The rocks and soil brought back by Apollo missions are extremely dry. The moon has no water. However, the moon is bombarded by comets and meteoroids that have water. Most of this water is lost to space, but some is trapped in permanently shadowed areas near the moon's poles. To the unaided eye, the moon's bright highlands and the dark "seas" make up the "man in the moon." A telescope shows that they consist of a great variety of round impact features — scars left by objects that struck the moon long ago. The largest scars are called impact basins, ranging up to about 1,500 miles across. The basins were flooded with lava some time after being formed. There are no mountains on the moon that formed as the mountains on Earth did. Instead, the moon is overlaid by rubble created by constant bombardment by meteoroids, asteroids and comets. .
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