Why does the Moon revolve around the Earth and not the Sun?

Although we are constantly expanding our knowledge of space, we still know very, very little about our vast universe. Even the planets below us remain mysterious in many ways. Among all these mysteries, different questions or scenarios come to life in the minds of those who use their imaginations?

For example, “What would happen if the moon started coming towards us one day?” We can show a question like: You can even take a look at our content on this subject. The question we’re going to focus on now is: Why can’t the Sun, which is so huge, pull the Moon out of Earth’s orbit?

Does the Earth keep the Moon around itself because it is closer to the Moon than the Sun?

We would like to say yes to this question and end it here, but unfortunately no. The gravitational pull of planets (that is, the gravitational force they exert on objects in space) is of course affected by distance. But if we focus only on that, we miss the main factor that influences the strength of gravity: the mass itself.

The greater the mass of objects in space, the greater the gravitational field they create, and the further you move away from this gravitational field, the weaker the effect on you will be.

The Sun itself makes up 99.8 percent of our massive Solar System:

The distance between the Sun and the Moon is many times greater than the distance between the Earth and the Moon. However, the Sun still exerts twice the gravitational force on the Moon than Earth does. If the planets were not orbiting the Sun, the Earth would be moving towards the Sun at full speed along with the Moon. But we must not forget that we do not stand still in the Solar System.

We are moving around the sun at a speed of about 107 thousand kilometers per hour:

In this context, we approach it at certain times and move away from it at certain times. In this way, we do not move directly towards him and our distance remains constant. The Moon also has a certain path that it draws with its speed in the Earth’s orbit. At this point, we need to look at the term ‘escape velocity’, which applies to all planets and stars, not just Earth.

In order to completely get rid of the gravity that an object exerts on you, you need to reach the escape velocity (or energy):

• How fast would the rockets have to go to leave different planets?

The energy to be spent for this or the speed to be reached varies according to both the object itself and the mass of the object on it. Because as we have learned so far, mass and gravitational force are directly proportional. In other words, the speed you need to reach to get out of Earth orbit will be more than enough to get rid of the Moon’s orbit, but insufficient to get rid of Jupiter’s due to the mass difference.

The Moon is moving around the Earth at roughly 1 kilometer per second:

In addition, since the center of gravity is farther from us, the speed it will need to escape from orbit will also change at this rate. According to calculations made in some places, the Moon needs to move at a speed of 1.2 kilometers per second to get out of orbit. If this result, which varies according to distance, is true, we can say that it is frightening that such a small difference has the potential to throw the Moon out of our orbit.

In other words, we can state the answer to our question as ‘The moon is not fast enough’. But it would be wrong to say that the Moon is not circling the Sun, but the Earth. Because both have gravitational pull on the Moon:

To put it simply, it is obvious that it revolves around the Sun along with the Earth. There are many variables in the calculations on this question, so we have no choice but to explain roughly, but this is the essence of the matter. You can share your thoughts in the comment section.

Sources: Science ABC, Universe Today, Physics Class