My name is Helena Tattersfield and I know random trivia facts. These random trivia facts inspire me to research the topic and therefore expand my knowledge. The purpose of this weekly trivia column is to encourage you to learn new facts that would allow you to win trivia night every Wednesday at Buddy’s Union Villa, or win the game of Trivia Pursuit when playing with your family or friends. Or maybe you just have an affinity for knowing random information about the world. Nonetheless, you can learn about interesting facts of the world that will impress your friends.
So… True or False: The moon is slowly moving away from the Earth.
Sorry to all those who answered false: it’s true!
For all of human existence, the moon has existed in the sky. It has always been the beautiful extraterrestrial object that you pointed out to your family in the car at night, the object that you take pictures of to post on social media, or, to some, just that bright ball in the night sky. The moon has inspired many folktales and stories (such as how it is composed of swiss and cheddar cheese), and has even entertained some conspiracy theories (the NASA moon landing being fake, being the most popular). But how could the moon be something we see everyday and hear about so often, yet not know that the moon is slowly moving away from the earth on inch (1.48 inches to be exact) per year. To know how, let’s look at how it was formed and its function.
Astrologers speculate that the moon was formed by a collision between early earth and a large asteroid approximately 4.5 billion year ago. The collision would have broken large masses of rock and other minerals off of primitive earth, which, combined with the gravity of the earth and the gravity of each individual rock, clumped together and began to fall into an orbit around the earth. At this stage, the moon was estimated to be about 14,000 miles (22,500 km) away from the earth, yet now it is a quarter of a million miles (402,336 km) away.
The gravity of this newly created, earth-orbiting space object exerted on the earth’s water, forming tide bulges. In addition to the moon’s gravitational force, the earth rotates on its axis, therefore causing the tides to occur slightly faster than the moon’s force. These two forces combine to push the moon away from the earth at a rate of 1.48 inches (or 3.78 cm) per year. This phenomenon is similar to when a child plays on the roundabout structure at a playground: the faster it spins, the more pressure is exerted on the child, thus creating the feeling of being pushed off the structure.
Since the earth’s rotation also causes tides, would the moon exiting its orbit have a major effect on the earth at all? The answer is yes, it would. In addition to the push and pull sensation of the tides, the moon’s gravitational force keeps the earth rotating on its axis. This means that as the moon moves away from the Earth, the earth’s rotation slows down, which in turn adds more seconds to a day. About 4.5 billion years ago, it was estimated that primitive earth days were about 5 hours long; whereas now they are 24 hours long.
Would this affect life on Earth? Some astrologers and scientists hypothesize that it would due to the moon’s effect on both the tides and its rotation, but it would take billions of years t