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Scientists Calculate the Moon To Be 4.51 Billion Years Old (go.com)
Scientists used rocks and soil collected by the Apollo 14 moonwalkers in 1971 to calculate the age of the moon. It turns out that it is much older than scientists suspected, coming in at 4.51 billion years old. ABC News reports: A research team reported Wednesday that the moon formed within 60 million years of the birth of the solar system. Previous estimates ranged within 100 million years, all the way out to 200 million years after the solar system's creation, not quite 4.6 billion years ago. The scientists conducted uranium-lead dating on fragments of the mineral zircon extracted from Apollo 14 lunar samples. The pieces of zircon were minuscule -- no bigger than a grain of sand. The moon was created from debris knocked off from Earth, which itself is thought to be roughly 4.54 billion years old. Some of the eight zircon samples were used in a previous study, also conducted at UCLA, that utilized more limited techniques. Melanie Barboni, lead author of the study from the University of California, Los Angeles, said she is studying more zircons from Apollo 14 samples, but doesn't expect it to change her estimate of 4.51 billion years for the moon's age, possibly 4.52 billion years at the most. The study was published today in the journal Science.
Uranium-lead dating of zircon counts from the time the mineral (specifically, the zircon crystals) was formed - that is, the time the rock solidified. Any natural event which could get rocks from earth to orbit is going to involve such high energy that the material would certainly be melted. If the moon formed from slow accumulation, these are surface rocks and would still have been melted on impact. Either way, the radiometric clock starts ticking as soon as the material cools to the point of solidification.
The radiometric dating is done on zircon mineral crystals. These crystals would form naturally after the molten rock of the early moon cooled...just like on earth. So the date of 4.51 billion years is the time the molten moon cooled and the zircon (which was ejected from earth in what must have been a massive collision) formed. The oldest rock on earth has zircon that is dated to 4.54 billion years ago.To quote wikipedia: "Zircon incorporates uranium and thorium atoms into its crystal structure, but strongly rejects lead. Therefore, one can assume that the entire lead content of the zircon is radiogenic, i.e. it is produced solely by a process of radioactive decay after the formation of the mineral. Thus the current ratio of lead to uranium in the mineral can be used to determine its age."
Well the God of the Bible is clearly an egomaniac, thankfully He is not the only one man has invented.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.