The Conversation contributed the article to Space.com's expert voices.
The professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences is Joshua Davies.
Margriet Lantink is a researcher in the Department of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
You wouldn't think that the moon is moving away from Earth when you look up at it. We are aware of that. Reflecting panels were installed on the moon. The moon is moving 3.8 cm away from the earth every year.
We end up with a collision between the Earth and moon around 1.5 billion years ago if we project the moon's current rate of recession back in time. The current recession rate is not a good guide for the past because the moon was formed 4.5 billion years ago.
We have been using a combination of techniques to try and find out more about our solar system's past.
The perfect place to find the long-term history of our moon has been found. It's not from studying the moon but from reading signals in ancient layers of rock on Earth.
What happened to the moon?
The gorges in the national park are 2.5 billion years old. The iron and silica-rich minerals are found on the oldest parts of the Earth and were deposited on the ocean floor.
There are layers of reddish-brown iron formation just under a meter thick that are alternated at regular intervals by darker, thinner horizon.
The softer type of rock is more vulnerable to erosion. There is a regular, smaller-scale variation found at the outcrops. A pattern of alternating white, reddish and blueish-grey layers can be seen on the rock surfaces.
The question of the origin of the different scales of recurring patterns was raised in 1972 by Australian geologist A.F. Trendall. The patterns may be related to the Milankovitch cycles.
The Milankovitch cycles show how small, periodic changes in the shape of the Earth's orbit and the orientation of its axis affect the distribution of sunlight received by Earth over a long period of time.
The Milankovitch cycles change every 400,000 years. Over time, these variations exert a strong control on our climate.
Extreme cold, warm periods, and wet weather are some of the key examples of Milankovitch climate forcing in the past.
The size of lakes has changed as a result of the climate change. The greening of the Saharan desert and low levels of oxygen in the deep ocean are explained by them. Our own species has also been influenced by Milankovitch cycles.
The signatures of the changes can be seen through the changes in the rocks.
There is a correlation between the distance between the Earth and the moon and the Milankovitch cycles. The Earth's spin axis is influenced by the precessional motion of the planet. When the moon was close to Earth, the duration of this cycle would have been shorter.
This means that we can estimate the distance between the Earth and the moon if we can find Milankovitch cycles and then find a signal of the Earth wobbling.
Trendall's theory that Milankovitch cycles may be preserved in an ancient banded iron formation is supported by our previous research.
The banded iron formations in Australia were deposited in the same ocean as the South African rocks. The Australian rocks have better exposed variations that allow us to study them better.
Our analysis of the Australian banded iron formation shows that there are multiple scales of variations which repeat at 4 and 33 inch. When we combined the thicknesses with the rate at which the sediments were deposited, we found that they occur every 11,000 and 100,000 years.
The 11,000 cycle observed in the rocks may be related to the precession cycle, which has a shorter period than the current 21,000 years. The distance between the Earth and the moon was calculated using the precession signal.
The distance from the moon to the Earth was approximately 1.5 times the diameter of the planet. It would take 17 hours instead of the current 24 hours to complete a day.
Models for the formation of our solar system have been provided by research in astronomy.
One of the only ways to get real data on the evolution of our solar system is through our study and some research by others.
The solar system dynamics can be determined from small variations in ancient rocks. We don't have a full understanding of the evolution of the Earth-moon system.
New modelling approaches and reliable data are needed to understand the evolution of the moon. Our research team is looking for the next set of rocks that can give us more information about the solar system's past.
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