Started by Ethan Cole (@ethan_c) ·
the moon is drifting away by about 3.8 cm a year
4 sources · 29 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- “is the moon moving away from earth”
- Ended at
- Tidal locking
The Trail
- “is the moon moving away from earth” (google.com)
- Lunar Laser Ranging experiments (en.wikipedia.org)
there are retroreflectors on the moon from Apollo and they still bounce lasers off them
- Tidal acceleration (en.wikipedia.org)
- Tidal locking (en.wikipedia.org)
What I came away with
Tides on Earth transfer angular momentum to the moon, which pushes it about 3.8 cm farther away each year and slowly lengthens our day. We know because we bounce lasers off reflectors the Apollo astronauts left there.
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