Why is the moon moving away from Earth?

The Earth and the Moon live a love story, but like every couple, it had a beginning and will have an end. Science tells us that our beloved satellite is already moving away from us.

What is the origin of the Moon?

It’s easy to believe that the Moon has always been there and always will be, but neither is true.

According to the hypothesis with the most data in its favor, the Moon was formed when a protoplanet the size of Mars collided with Earth. about 4.5 billion years ago. At that time, the Earth’s surface was covered by magma, and the Earth’s crust had not yet fully formed. Continents and oceans did not exist, and most of the water was in the form of vapor in the atmosphere.

Debris left over from the impact coalesced to form the Moon. Computer simulations of such an impact are consistent with the Earth-Moon system we see in the 21st century.

The simulations also show that at the time of its formation, the Moon was much closer to Earth, only 22,500 km away, compared to the 402,336 km between the Earth and the Moon today.

The moon moves away from the earth

The Moon continues to rotate and move away from Earth at a rate of 3.78 cm per year, at about the same rate as our fingernails grow.

lunar remoteness It is mainly due to the action of the terrestrial tides. The Moon is held in orbit by the gravitational force that the Earth exerts on it, but the Moon also exerts a gravitational force on our planet, which contributes to the tides (these can be understood as a bulge of the sea as the Moon approaches).

Part of the rotating energy of the earth is transferred to the tides and these they in turn push the Moon into a farther orbit. As a consequence of this friction between our planet and the Moon, the Moon also reduces its travel speed.

What will happen to us when the Moon is gone?

In all probability we will not be here to see it. Without the Moon, the Earth could become very unstable, but this will happen billions of years from now, and it may even never happen.

While 3.78 cm may not seem like much, this small difference over a long enough period of time could affect life on Earth, causing the planet to slow down.

On the primitive Earth, when the Moon was just formed, the days lasted five hours, but with the braking effect of the Moon operating on the Earth the days have slowed down to 24 hours with which we are familiar.

In the future the days will be longer: they lengthen 19 hours every 4,500 million years. The length of a day, or in other words the speed of the planet’s rotation, plays an important role in its stability.

As the rotation of the Earth slows down, our entire planet may begin to slowly wobble and this will have a devastating effect on the seasons, the succession of which will change if the tilt of the Earth’s axis changes, which is currently 23 degrees.

During the summer, the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, so we have longer days and warmer weather. However, in winter, the Northern Hemisphere moves away from the Sun, giving us shorter days and cooler weather.

The earth would become very unstable

If this were to change and the Earth became unstable, some parts of the world could experience much greater temperature swings than we are used to, with freezing arctic temperatures in winter followed by extremely high temperatures in summer. It is very likely that most animals and plants could not adapt to the changes.

Much more urgent threats weigh on the human species than the distance from the Moon. If we manage to overcome the problem of the exploitation of natural resources, environmental pollution and competition between blocks endowed with incredibly powerful technologies, we will have time to face the problem of the loss of our satellite.