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thats true, however the author explicitly stated that the collision point of earth and moon at 1.5 billion years was calculated by assuming the moons CURRENT rate of recession

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At no point does the author make any assertion that the rate was constant. Presumably, the current rate of recession is just one variable that gets plugged into an equation.

"If we take the moon's current rate of recession and project it back in time" is a very straight forward way of saying, lets assume the moon receeded from the earth at the current rate.

No it’s not because you are projecting backward in time in the presence of a gravitational field that varies with square of radius.

The path of the moon away from the Earth is not a straight line, it is a tightly wound spiral.

given your insight in the matter, would you care to post the correct calculation then?

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