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Question

How we can say that moon is falling as according to a news every year it is moving away from us changing the earth's speed of rotation to slow down?

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Solution

The Moon is actually moving steadily away from us, at a speed of about a few inches per year. During its formation from an Earth planet collision debris, the Moon was actually much closer, about 15000 km, and dominated the night sky.

During the Earth's gravitational pull, it does not rotate on own axis like the Earth does and as a consequence of that it is slowly flying off.

Reason:

The migration of the Moon away from the Earth is mainly due to the action of the Earth's tides.

The Moon is kept in orbit by the gravitational force that the Earth exerts on it, but the Moon also exerts a gravitational force on our planet and this causes the movement of the Earth's oceans to form a tidal bulge.

Due to the rotation of the Earth, this tidal bulge actually sits slightly ahead of the Moon. Some of the energy of the spinning Earth gets transferred to the tidal bulge via friction.

This drives the bulge forward, keeping it ahead of the Moon. The tidal bulge feeds a small amount of energy into the Moon, pushing it into a higher orbit like the faster, outside lanes of a test track.


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