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Thu 07 Jul 2009The man on the moon is one of the facts of lunar life
UNDER THE MICROSCOPE:IT SEEMS that the young Earth had no moon, but soon after the Earth formed, a Mars-sized rogue planet struck it a huge glancing blow. A large chunk of Earth and most of the rogue planet were vaporised into a cloud that rose more than 22,000km in altitude, where it condensed gradually into the solid moon. Lunar rocks are about 4.6 billion years old – about the same age as Earth, and the composition of lunar rocks is very similar to rocks on Earth.
The moon is slowly moving away from Earth. The current distance between the Earth and the moon is 384,000km but it was closer in the past. The moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth at a rate of 4cm per year.
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