Earlier, we explained to you what would happen if the moon, the satellite of our planet, came towards us to strike us. In our content, which included a very chaotic scenario, we also mentioned the critical roles of the Moon on our planet. In this content, we will take a look at a situation that most people already realize but have difficulty in making sense of.
The Moon, which completes its orbit around our planet every 27 days, always shows us the same face during this time. In response to this situation, as a ready-made answer, you can say that the Moon does not rotate around itself and that’s why we see it the same way. But we also know that the Moon rotates around itself. So how come we always see the same side of the Moon?
If the Moon revolves both around itself and around our planet, shouldn’t we be able to see all sides of it?
This question sounds pretty plausible when you don’t factor in the rate at which the Moon revolves around itself and around the Earth. In fact, the Moon has tried to change the face it has shown us many times since the beginning, but the Earth prevented this from happening over time and brought its satellite to its current state. So how did he do it?
The Moon, which orbits the Earth in 27 days, takes the same time to complete one orbit around itself. In other words, at the end of 1 month, it rotates both around us and around itself.
This causes us to see the same hemisphere every time we look at it. This is exactly what prevents us from seeing the dark side of the Moon.
We can see a little more than 50 percent of the Moon that the Moon shows us at certain times. This excess is not much, it covers only 9 percent of the invisible part. In other words, we can only see 59 percent of the Moon from Earth.
After the rough explanation, let’s simply explain what a ‘Gravity lock’ is in order to fully establish the logic: First, let’s go back a bit
This situation, also known as synchronous rotation, means that a celestial body always shows the same face to the other object in its orbit, just like in the case of the Moon. Of course, the moon wasn’t always like this. Since it had a very incompatible speed with the Earth when it first started to form, the period of rotation both around itself and around our planet was quite different.
In a long time, when the gravitational force exerted by the Earth caused the Moon to distort its shape, certain changes occurred in its speed. For the sake of visualization, those of us standing on Earth feel gravitational forces on our feet and heads that are not so different from each other.
But the distance between Earth and Moon and the size of the Moon change things:
The side facing us has more gravitational pull than the dark side. Since the moon rotates around itself, if the center of gravity tried to turn its face away from the Earth, the gravitational force of our planet would keep it where it is.
In other words, if the Moon was moving faster than it actually is, the Earth would try to keep it in line every time, and return it to its original position. This is what equated the time it took for the Moon to complete its orbit around the Earth with its own orbit.
Of course, there are mutual influences here. Because as a result of the same effect, the Moon acted as a brake against the Earth and increased the duration of the day, which was only 6 hours long ago, to 24 hours today.
We said that the Earth distorted the shape of the Moon. The Moon, on the other hand, does this by raising the levels of the oceans from time to time, which are quite easy to take shape:
Finally, let us state that this is not a special case of the Earth-Moon couple, but is also seen on other planets and moons in the Solar System. You can share your thoughts on the subject in the comment section.
Sources: Astronomy, Space-Science, Conceptual Academy, Sky at Night Magazine, Evolutionary Tree
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