How did our Sun and Moon form and how long ago? Is there evidence for design?
350169
The sun was formed the same way all other stars are formed. A nebula, a cloud of gas and other particles, started to come together in a clump. This clump then got bigger and bigger until it could ignite fusion, which is the process that powers the sun. This all happened at around 4.5 billion years ago.\nThe moon, on the other hand, could have formed several ways. The leading theory is that a mars-sized object slammed into earth. The stuff that was thrown into orbit slowly coalesced to form the moon. This all happened not too long after the sun and earth were formed. Of course, all of this, the dates especially, is simply scientific theory. The only direct evidence we have are geological records. Do these theories have evidence for design? Not much. Do these theories disprove design? Not at all! Scientific theories are proven wrong all the time.
181725
depending on who you ask....\n\ni'm a christian, who's looked into and studied the past and how to explain the existence of dinosaurs and how it could correlate with the bible.\n\ni believe the earth was made in 6 days and adam and eve and the "dinosaurs" were made.  and like someone else said, basically back then the earth was like a huge greenhouse... everything was much larger than they are nowadays.  and also like someone else said, there has been proof found that humans coexisted with dinosaurs (that link above).  and there is also proof that carbon-14 dating can be highly inaccurate (they tested a bone and the skin attached to it... they came up with millions of years difference between the skin and bone of the same animal!!!).  so just because all these scientists say this stuff doesn't mean that the bible can be easily discounted...\n\nscience is what you make it and can be easily skewed... i know this, i'm a science major!!!!  also from all my science classes... i really really don't find the whole evolution idea plausible.... to me, personally, having a belief in a superior being creating everything is more likely than everything evolving from an amoeba.  but hey, that idea runs better with other people and they have no room for believing in a being and hey, that's their choice.\n\nso i personally think that when the floods came (also when that greenhouse effect i mentioned earlier ended) that maybe the dinosaurs habitats were too effected that they died out and became extinct?\n\ni do agree with animals and such becoming better adapted over time.  i mean, we have too... if the environment changes, we need to keep up, otherwise we'll go the way of the dinosaurs.\n\nand for reference, the bible puts the earth at around 12,000 years old.
95335
Astronomers will tell you the Sun is dated at 4.5 billion years old\n\nhttp://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/AstroBrief/chapter12/sunage.html\n\nThe Sun will one day become a white dwarf and be the fiery death the Bible claims God will bestow upon us.\n\nhttp://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/dwarfs.html\n\nPersonally, I think it's all a farce:\nhttp://www.celestialproducts.com/BA.asp\n\nor maybe I'm just angstrom's away from reality. hmm. I wonder, but not for too long as I may contract Homer Simpson syndrome.
608831
Don't want to cut and paste it all, but you can find that information on Wikipedia in the third section down "Age and origin of the solar system"\n\nLink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system\n\n(Or you can just wait a few minutes until someone else cuts & pastes the whole thing.\n\nSome other good sources:\nhttp://www.nineplanets.org/origin.html\nhttp://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/solarsystem/origins.shtml\nhttp://www.britannica.com/eb/article-27552
268015
The matter that made up the sun and planets existed at one time as a very large disk. As the matter clumped together, it was already on the same plane. That's the theory, anyway.
221112
The moon was created when a planetesimal the size of mars smashed into the protoearth some 4,5 billion years ago. A portion of earths crust was cast out into an orbit around earth where if formed the moon. This is why the moon is lacking in heavier materials like iron while its composition is very similar to the rock that we find on Hawaii and Iceland. This theory also explains why the moon is almost completely void of volatiles like water, nitrogen and carbonaceous minerals.
272482
When the Sun was born. ;)  4.6 billion years ago.
985501
Nice idea.... but there is a BIG hole in your theory:\n\nThe moon broke off from the earth somewhere between 3.5 and 4.5 billion years ago.... i.e. the Hadean... the more specific name for the earlier Precambrian.\n\nPangaea didn't even begin moving together until 1.1 billion years ago, and wasn't together as one continent until about 500 million years ago.... during the Permian.\n\nOh... and tectonic plate movement is a result of thermal flows in the mantle.\n\nPangaea has nothing to do with the moon, sorry to say.
398017
I think your asking if the moon has ever been split into two pieces and the answer to that is no.  The most popular theory within the scientific community on the origin of our moon is that it is the leftover material from a collision between our earth and another inner planet billions and billions of years ago.
902878
1.Sunspots and Solar Flares are two "surface features".\nsunspots are created due to intense magnetic emissions, which lower temperature and prohibit convection, the transfer of heat through fluids (liquids and gases)\nSolar Flares are violent explosions within the atmosphere of the sun, which eject superheated plasma at over 1 million miles an hour. the flares also emit all forms of electromagnetic radiation, from short wave gamma radiation to long wave radio.\n\n2. Up until the mid-19th century, the light parts (terrae) and dark parts (mare) were thought to be land masses and oceans respectively.\nA theory propagated in Nazi Germany was that the moon, and other celestial bodies, were made of ice.\nUp until the 1950's, it was not completely accepted that the features of the moon were impact craters. Now we know that they truly are craters left over from meteor impacts, the youngest of which are hundred of thousands to millions of years old.\n\n3. What Shoemaker meant was, that since the Moon has no atmosphere, there is no chance of erosion or weathering affecting the features.\nCraters and debris pile up, never changing, just being overlapped by newer events.\n\n4. "Sunshine" Is called an Exothermic thermonuclear reaction (nuclear fusion). The exothermic fusion events happen in the core, where hydrogen is converted into helium, helium into carbon, and carbon into iron.\nThe heat energy created by fusion in the core then travels trough the rest of the layers of the sun before escaping as light and other forms of energy.\n\n5. There is a large amount of Iridium found in the fossil layer of around 65 million years ago, and Iridium (very rare on Earth) is abundant in asteroids.\nChicxulub Crater is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the Yucatan Peninsula. Geologic studies have found that the age and chemical composition of the crater corresponds with the hypothesized asteroid that hit Earth 65 million years ago.\n\n6. The moon is tidally locked in orbit around the Earth, so that as it rotates, we rotate, so that the same face is always pointing toward us. The moon rotates and orbits completely around the Earth every four weeks, so that is why we never see the far side. \n\n7. Mercury and Pluto would have the most in common with the Moon, due to their lack of atmosphere. Mars is semi-similar to the Moon, due to the lack of water available to erode the topography.\nEarth and Venus are the least like the Moon, due to their rather violent atmospheres.\n\n8. Contrary to popular belief, the Earth is NOT closer to the sun, any time of the year. Its orbit is described as elliptical, but only because it is not a perfect circle.\nSince the Earth is tilted, currently in Washington it is autumn, but it is spring in Australia.\nThe Northern Hemisphere is angled so the suns rays are less direct in hitting the face of the planet, and the Southern Hemisphere is angled so the rays are more direct.
800776
1.  Longer shadows\n2.  The moon's gravitational pull and the sun's gravity also\n3.  The sun\n4.  counterclockwise, west, east\n5.  D\n6.  The Earth's Rotation\n7.  The earth is at a slant compared to it's solar revolution, so the earth recieves more sunlight in different areas, and the earth's solar revolution isn't a perfect circle, AND the earth wobbles\n8.  The sun's reflection causes the moon to light up, and so the sun's position determin's the shape.\n9.  the earth and the sun and the moon have to line up in a linear fashion, perfectly, not just good enough for a full moon
102408
The solar system is believed to be approximately 4.6 billion years old. We do not know in what order they were formed other than it was approximately 100 million years after the sun was formed.
513987
What confuses you about the moon? Most planets have them. Ours is old, lifeless, has a high reflectivity, and rotates once for every revolution (so we always see the same side). Why are you confused?
354795
It is a lot easier to demonstrate this with graphics than trying to explain it in text.  You can likely find a good diagram if you go to google it.\n\nFirst imagine the sun.  Now imagine the earth revolving around the sun.  Keep in mind that the earth and the sun are both extremely small compared to the distance that the earth is from the sun.  this means it's like two specks of dust revolving around each other in a basketball court, to give some perspective.\n\nNow imagine the moon revolving around the earth but ignoring gravitational effects of the sun (for simplicity).  Since the earth is so small compared to these revolutions, imagine that the earth very rarely blocks the light from the sun shining on the moon.\n\nNow when you observe the moon, if it is roughly between you and the sun, it is the backside of the moon that is lit.  This means the only part of the moon that you see is the shadow - or the new moon.  If when you observe the moon it is roughly behind the earth, you get to see the part of the moon that is being shined on by the sun - a full moon.  Since the moon revolves around the earth at a rate different from the rate at which the earth spins on its axis, the moon will change its orientation to give us our progression through the phases of the moon.\n\nJust an additional bit - eclipses are those rare times when the earth's shadow actually DOES hit the moon.. making what would've been a full moon into something else (a lunar eclipse).  The more commonly noticed (due to the drastic change in light during the day :D ) solar eclipses are when the moon directly blocks the sun's light from the earth.  These occur at regular intervals over series' of years.
760736
Your answer is A and F.  The moon never had plate tectonics, or at least never had it like we have it on earth (which does not normally cause mares), and there was never enough water to influence eruptions on the moon, and water mixing wouldn't cause that type of eruption anyways.
681027
There are several theories of the solar system. Two important theories I concern are mentioned below.\n(1)Immanuel Kant and the French astronomer and mathematician Pierre Simon de Laplace, according to which a cloud of gas broke into rings that condensed to form planets.\n(2) Many of Current theories connect the formation of the solar system with the formation of the Sun itself, about 4.7 billion years ago. The fragmentation and gravitational collapse of an interstellar cloud of gas and dust, triggered perhaps by nearby supernova explosions, may have led to the formation of a primordial solar nebula
1037168
That's a good question. I'm quite sure "God made it" isn't the answer you're looking for, especially since you posted this in the science section. \n\nReligion seems to have all the answers, but those answers never satisfy the appetite of curiosity and learning. Below are several different worded versions of the same basic theory of how the Earth (and other planets) formed. \n\nBe sure to check out the sources.\n\n1. The planets formed from the material left over as a result of our sun's formation. As the nebulous cloud condensed and began to rotate, most of the gas condensed into what is now our sun. The remaining material formed what is now the planets and the other bodies in our solar system.\n\n2. The prevailing theory is that they are formed from those remnants of a nebula that do not condense under gravity to form a protostar. Instead, these remnants become a thin disc of dust and gas revolving around the protostar and begin to condense about local concentrations of mass within the disc. These concentrations become ever more dense until they collapse inward under gravity to form protoplanets. When the protostar has grown such that it ignites to form a star, its solar wind blows away most of the disc's remaining material. Thereafter there still may be many protoplanets orbiting the star or each other, but over time many will collide, either to form a single larger planet or release material for other larger protoplanets or planets to absorb. Meanwhile, protoplanets that have avoided collisions may become moons of larger planets.\n\n3. The most widely accepted model for the origin of the Solar System is called the  nebula theory. Most generally phrased, the theory states that the Solar System condensed from a large, lumpy cloud of cold gas and dust.\n\n4. Solar Nebula Theory