Rapid solidification of Earth’s magma ocean limits early lunar recession

The early evolution of the Earth–Moon system prescribes the tidal environment of the Hadean Earth and holds the key to the formation mechanism of the Moon and its thermal evolution. Estimating its early state by backtracking from the present, however, suffers from substantial uncertainties associated with ocean tides. Tidal evolution during the solidification of Earth’s magma ocean, on the other hand, has the potential to provide robust constraints on the Earth–Moon system before the appearance of a water ocean. Here we show that energy dissipation in a solidifying magma ocean results in considerably more limited lunar recession than previously thought, and that the Moon was probably still at the distance of ∼7–9 Earth radii at the end of solidification. This limited early recession aggravates the often overlooked difficulty of modeling tidal dissipation in Earth’s first billion years, but it also offers a new possibility of resolving the lunar inclination problem by allowing the operation of multiple excitation mechanisms. •Earth’s magma ocean solidifies within ∼105 years, even with tidal heating.•Limited lunar recession may facilitate resolving the lunar inclination problem.•The tidal evolution of the ealry Earth–Moon system remains highly uncertain.