[ Technical Notes > How Much Dust and Meteoritic Debris Should the Moon Have If It Is 4,600,000,000 Years Old? > Conclusion ]
Conclusion
The relative small amount of debris on the Moon is inconsistent with what we would expect if the solar system and Moon evolved over 4.6 × 109 years. It appears that two types of impacts have occurred:
a. a brief and recent interval of very high-velocity impacts by rocks launched from Earth, many of which were large, and
b. a diminishing number of smaller impacts, distributed today as shown in Regions A–C.
Several individuals have published attempts to answer the question of this technical note. Those efforts have usually (1) neglected the factor of 67, (2) ignored the large impacts shown by Point E, (3) assumed that the influx rate has always been what it is today, and (4) overlooked the relatively recent event that produced meteorites, pummeled the Moon, and provided secondary impactors.
In 2014, rather than measuring the debris falling on the moon, NASA finally processed data that measured the rate at which dust settles on the Moon’s surface. Beginning in 1969, small matchbox-sized instruments to measure the rate of influx of Moon dust were sent to the Moon on Apollo 11, 12, 14, and 15. These devices radioed back to Earth every 54 seconds the amount of dust that had collected on them. The conclusion:
Powdery particles resting on the Moon’s surface could form a layer up to 1 millimeter thick every 1,000 years.7
At that rate, after 4.6-billion years (the Moon’s age according to evolutionists), the Moon’s dust layer would be 2.9-miles thick. This is a conservative estimate, because the influx of dust has undoubtedly been decreasing. Obviously, the Moon has not been collecting dust for 4.6-billion years.