How much dust was estimated to be on the moon ?

Question

I know that creationists used the argument that the moon must be young after it was found that the amount of dust on the moon was much less than estimated. This was later resolved, but how much dust was estimated to be on the moon initially?

Answer 1

Quoting from the source cited below --

The Claim

According to some Creationists, the earth gets millions of tons of dust per year from outer space. Therefore, the moon also gets a fair bit. If the moon is five billion years old, then it should be covered in 50 or 100 feet of dust. It isn't. Therefore, the moon must be much younger than scientists say.

Notice that this is not a claim based on the Bible. The specific number of tons per year is quoted from the scientific literature.

The Facts

The infall of dust is one hundred times less than these Creationists say it is. This has been known since about 1963. The argument has been kept alive by not quoting from scientific articles written after 1960.

That source also goes into greater detail, should you want to read it, and I hope you do.

ps - I see on second reading that the questioner appears not to need convincing, and that I ignored the actual question. Sorry. The article I read does not address the specific estimates of dust depths on the lunar surface, but suggests instead that the estimates that mattered to this issue were those of the rate of influx of dust from space, and that direct measurements from space adjusted this estimate down considerably. Quantitatively, 5 million tons per year of dust originally estimated in the '50s by Hans Pattersson from mountaintop measurements, and published in Scientific American. This was revised downward to 18,000 to 25,000 tons per year after space-borne measurements were made. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Quoting from Talkorigns:

The high number for dust accumulation (14 million tons per year on earth) comes from the high end of a single preliminary measurement that has long been obsolete. Other higher estimates come from even more obsolete sources, although they are sometimes incorrectly cited as being more recent. The actual influx is about 22,000 to 44,000 tons per year on earth and around 840 tons per year on the moon.

The story that scientists worried about astronauts sinking in moon dust is a total fabrication. As early as 1965, scientists were confident, based on optical properties of the moon's surface, that dust was not extensive. Surveyor I, in May 1966, confirmed this.

Answer 3

Whoa!Slow down there!NASA scientists estimated there would be several feet of dust on the Moon's surface.This calculation was made because there is dust in space and as the Moon has no atmosphere it falls onto the Moon's surface at a particular rate.NASA assumed the age of the universe to be several billion years old and so they thought there had to be several feet of dust.When I was a kid,NASA sent several spacecraft crashing deliberately into the Moon's surface.I recall watching this once live on television.The spacecraft made a beeping sound.If the beep ended as soon as the camera went blank then there was only a few inches of dust.If it kept beeping after the camera blanked then there was several feet of dust.Guess what?As soon as the camera went black the beeping stopped.The first thing Neil Armstrong did before he stepped off the lunar lander was to kick the surface to confirm there was only a small amount of dust.For there to be only a few inches of dust on the surface of the Moon means it is only about 10,000 years old.I don't know how you evolutionists will "resolve" your conflict with the facts.You could start by believing your own discoveries in relation to the amount of dust and the age of the Moon and coming to the only conclusion permitted by these facts rather than attempting to reconcile them to your own phony beliefs about evolution and the age of the universe.  

Answer 4

"This was formerly a widely-used young-Earth claim, but it has now been discredited. Nonetheless, it is still sometimes repeated in young-Earth circles. One of the first estimates of dust expected on the Moon was made in 1960 by Hans Pettersson. Pettersson estimated the influx of space dust by standing on top of a mountain with a device used to measure smog levels. By assuming (incorrectly) that all of the nickel dust he detected came directly from outer space, Pettersson arrived at a very large estimate of the amount of space dust falling on the Earth (and the Moon). When the Apollo astronauts found that the amount of dust on the Moon was much less than suggested by Pettersson's measurements, some young-Earth advocates claimed this proved that the Moon was young. Not long after Pettersson, however, the influx of space dust was measured by satellites. It has been measured several different ways now, and is known to be almost 1,000 times smaller than Pettersson thought. In fact, there is no discrepancy whatsoever between the influx of space dust and the amount of dust found on the Moon's surface. Nowadays, most of the more responsible young-Earth advocates have ceased to use this claim. For example, Snelling and Rush (Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, v.7, pp.2-42 (1993)) not only explain why the moon-dust argument is untenable, they also refute the commonly-repeated myth that Apollo scientists were afraid that their landers would sink into a deep dust layer."

http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/...