Moons: their origin, age, & recession

I wanted to jump into this thread, but it so quickly became uncontrollable nonsense and awckward that I quickly gave up lolI am tempted to start another thread on lunar recession, so we can calmly and slowly discuss it. (calypsis's thread accumulate pages at a high rate to say the least)

Hey, I'm creationist by the way. But you can't just keep on piling things up in a thread, one after the other. You have to take the original claim of your thread (lunar recession), and you defend it. Rationally. And if it becomes unreasonable, you admit it and pass on to another line of argument.You can't just keep on piling argument after argument one after the other. The laws of logic as well as reason were made by God, or rather in fact they are a direct result of God's self-consistent nature, and I would suggest you used them more. Less writing, more thinking.

I have read that talkorigins.org article about a year ago, I know the other side of the debate.And I don't understand you explanation of it. ''Because of the complex interaction of forces, energy is being created'' .. energy being created, hey. You should maybe use better terminology The only reason why the moon is receeding is because the tide creates friction with the earth, which in turn causes the earth's rotation to slow down, and because the angular momentum must be conserved, the moon's own angular momentum increases, and this is why it is moving 'away' from the earth.In the past, the moon would have been closer to the earth, and so its gravitationnal pull on the water would have been greater, meaning there would have been greater friction between the earth and the ocean, meaning that, given the same earth then as now, the moon would have actually receded faster in the past. (see the third diagram on the lin you gave, or the diagram here: Lunar Recession | Answers in Genesis )

This is kidn of ironic, considering the first to propose plate tectonics (or at least, that the continents moved) was a creationist ...

Ok, I may not be able to explain it adequatly in english, but this is not the issue. What you said is of course true, but it does not apply to the moon which is in orbit. Their is no 'outward' force on the moon making it receed from the earth, in fact the absence of such a force means that it is continuously 'falling down' back on earth, but well since it is in orbit and so this is not readily apparent or intuitive.it is about the conservation of angular momentum, since the earth is loosing some, the moon must be gaining some. More angular momentum means it moves faster around the earth, whichin turn makes it have a higher orbit. Which means it has a higher orbit. I guess you could represent it as if the watr buldge is constantly 'pulling' on the moon and accelerating it.This is why the recession speed would have been greater in the past. Deyoung's calculations are correct, and his comprehension of the phenomenon is also correct (as is said in the very link you gave me). The whole issue depends on if k has been constant or not.PS If it isn't clear, I would guess cavediver could explain it better then me. I speak french and have only two months of university physics lol. He speaks english and has a PhD (I think ... ??) in physics.

Here's to hope you have done classical mechanics a bit, cause it'll be easier to explain. What you said is of coure true, but can't be applied this way to this problem. This is the image from the talkorigins website. Put a coordinate axie x/y on the water buldge on top. We see that the gravitational pull (B) of the moon in the x direction (Bcos(angle)) has to be be countered by the friction force F in the opposite direction in order for the buldge to be in equilibrium. If the force B is higher (as was in the past) then the friction also must be higher for the buldge to be in equilibrium.

I think they do adress the possibility that k is not constant:

Hehe, Dr. Adequate told me something similar not so long ago. I do have to say that I sometimes feel like the 'odd man out' with my fellow creationists around here ... So in the past, the lag angle would have been greater, and so not only would the gravitational force B exterted by the moon on the buldge would have been greater because of the smaller distance, but it's ''x'' component would have been greater also since the angle between B and the buldge would have been smaller. The fact that the moon would have been closer also reduces this angle. All this would imply that the friction force would have had to be even greater than in the present for the buldge to remain in equilibrium.I couldn't tell you if this is adressed by DeYoung's approach though. The talkorigins.org article seems to be criticising DeYoung approach because he considers the tidal dissipation to be constant. In this regard, I guess his calculations are a bit simplistic because within the line of reasoning I did above, the friction force would have been greater and so the tidal dissipation would also have been higher. ( Unless I misunderstand the term 'tidal dissipation')The talkorigins article, however, suggests that the tidal dissipation should have been smaller in the past. They refer to Stacey's book 'physics of the earth' (1977) for this. I don't know how they arrive at this conclusion. Maybe since we know that the moon is 4Billions years old, then it means that the tidal dissipation must have been smaller in the past.Or is the buldge even in equilibrium ? I have a hard time imagining that it isn't, since it would mean it is either accelerating or decelerating, with the later been more probable I guess.

It comes from the same link Calypsis gave. The moon's recession and age - creation.comYou probably stopped at the equations I would guess, in which they use a constant k. This discuss a variable k further down the article.

I don't want to listen to the whole video, could you give the exact time he talks about this ?