Its presence and proximity play a huge role in making life possible here on Earth. The moon's gravitational pull stabilizes Earth's wobble on its axis, leading to a stable climate. The moon's orbit around Earth is elliptical. At perigee — its closest approach — the moon comes as close as , miles , kilometers. At apogee — the farthest away it gets — the moon is , miles , km from Earth.
On average, the distance from Earth to the moon is about , miles , km. That wasn't always the case. Scientists think the moon formed when a massive Mars-sized object collided with the young planet. Gravity pulled the debris from the crash together to form the moon. Earth and its newly formed companion were 10 to 20 times closer together at their birth than they are now. The moon is in synchronous rotation with Earth. In other words, the moon rotates on its axis in about the same amount of time it takes to revolve around Earth — 27 days 8 hours, which is called sidereal month.
So we always see the same side of the moon; there is no "dark side of the moon. A lunar month , also called a synodic month, is the time it takes for the moon to complete a lunar cycle — full moon to full moon. As the moon rotates around Earth, it also rotates around the sun.
This hidden region is better known as "the far side of the moon. And scientists are learning more and more about our planetary neighbor's far side every year.
For example, scientists recently unlocked a lunar mystery that has puzzled them for decades: Why does the far side of the moon have fewer volcanic craters than the near side?
It turns out decaying radioactive elements like potassium and thorium are to blame. The near side is chock full of them. There's a lot of symmetry between the moon and Earth, most commonly seen in a phenomena known as tidal locking. That means that the moon's orbital period is equal to its rotational period. In the same time it's orbiting Earth, it's rotating. Earth has been stuck with the synchronous side for billions of years.
So during all that time, humanity has had a chance to become very familiar with the crater-filled side it sees, perhaps leading it to anthropomorphize a man on the moon. Not when the sun becomes a red dwarf in billions of years. Both Earth and its satellite will likely be incinerated when the star enters its next stage of life—but things will get weird before that, too. One side of the Earth will see the moon fully up in the sky while the other side of the Earth will never see the moon," says Everett Schlawin of Cornell.
Imagine: On one side of the planet, a permanent moon will fill the sky, while the other side of the planet gets a night sky full of stars. If the sun wasn't going to destroy everything very soon after that, it'd be worth seeing.
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If the Moon were gone, the days on Earth would last only six to twelve hours. This means that more than a thousand days would pass until one year would pass; hence the Earth would move quicker around the Sun. Our Moon affects the rotational speed of our planet due to their gravitational interactions. Our Earth would survive without the Moon, but life would be very different.
A day would only last six hours, and who knows how life would adapt to this, having less light. This is true when it comes to the night as well. Without the Moon, the nights on Earth would be even darker, and the ocean tides would be about one third as high as they are now.
This would cause no seasons or extreme seasons to occur on our planet. Many scientists claim that half the life on Earth may not have evolved as it did without the Moon. Thus, if the Moon would disappear, probably half or even more of the life on Earth would probably be extinct.
The change would be too drastic and too fast for many lifeforms to adapt to it. Evolution takes millions of years to observe, and we have evolved alongside our Moon since the beginning.
Nothing good might come to us if the Moon were to disappear. This is because of gravity. The gravity on Earth is much stronger than the gravity on the Moon, and thus, time passes more slowly on Earth than it does on the Moon. The difference is around 0. How Far Is the Moon? Apsis — Other Distances In meters, that would be ,, meters away from us, and in inches, the Moon is How Far is Moon from Earth Today?
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