Evolutionary theories for the origin of the Moon are highly speculative and completely inadequate.a The Moon could not have spun off Earth, because its orbital plane is too highly inclined. The Moon’s nearly circular orbit shows that it was never torn from nor captured by Earth.b If the Moon formed from particles orbiting Earth, other particles should be easily visible inside the Moon’s orbit; none are.
The once popular theory that the Moon formed from debris splashed from Earth by a Mars-size impactor is now largely rejected, because the rocks that astronauts brought back from the moon are too similar to those of Earth.c The impactor’s material should have been quite different.d (In Part II of this book, you will see why the loose rocks the astronauts brought back from the moon are so similar to Earth’s rocks. Those rocks came from Earth.) Had a Mars-size impact occurred, many small moons should have formed.e Also, the impactor’s glancing blow would either be too slight to form our large Moon, or so violent that Earth would end up spinning too fast.f Besides, part of Earth’s surface and mantle would have melted, but none of the indicators of that melting have been found.g Small particles splashed from Earth would have completely melted, allowing any water inside them to escape into the vacuum of space. However, Apollo astronauts found on the Moon tiny glass beads that had erupted as molten material from inside the Moon but had dissolved water inside! The total amount of water that was once inside the Moon probably equaled that in the Caribbean Sea.h Finally, a Mars-size impactor would heat up and evaporate much, if not all, of Earth’s surface water. Earth would likely have experienced a runaway greenhouse effect, making Earth permanently uninhabitable. [Page 626 explains aspects of this problem.]
These explanations have many other problems. Understanding them caused one expert to joke, “The best explanation [for the Moon] was observational error—the Moon does not exist.” i Similar difficulties exist for evolutionary explanations of the other (almost 200) known moons in the solar system.
But the Moon does exist. If it was not pulled or splashed from Earth, was not built up from smaller particles near its present orbit, and was not captured from outside its present orbit, only one hypothesis remains: the Moon was created in its present orbit. [See “Evolving Planets?” on page 34, and on pages 47–48, “Moon Dust and Debris,” “Moon Recession, and “Hot Moon.”]