Origin of the Moon
Measuring the ages of lunar rocks has revealed that the Moon is about 4.6 billion years old, or about the same age as Earth and probably the rest of the solar system. Before the modern age of space exploration, scientists had three major models for the origin of the Moon. The fission from Earth model proposed that the young, molten Earth rotated so fast that it flung off some material that became the Moon. The formation in Earth orbit model claimed that the Moon formed independently, but close enough to Earth to orbit the planet. The formation far from Earth model proposed that the Moon formed independently in orbit around the Sun but was subsequently captured by Earth’s gravity when it passed close to the planet. None of these three models, however, is entirely consistent with current knowledge of the Moon. In 1975, having studied moon rocks and close-up pictures of the Moon, scientists proposed what has come to be regarded as the most probable of the theories of formation: a giant, p