Why is the moon drifting away from the Earth??

Question

does it have somethin to do with tidal waves??

Answer 1

Tidal friction. The Moon's gravity pulls up a small bulge on the Earth; the tides are the fluid water in the oceans being effected more than the solid ground, but even the ground gets deformed some. This makes the shape of the Earth not exactly symmetrical. The mass of the bulges has gravity, which pulls on the Moon. Because the Earth rotates on its axis much faster than the Moon orbits Earth, and in the same direction, the bulges get dragged out ahead of the Moon a little by friction with the rest of the Earth. From that position a little ahead of the Moon, then their gravity pulls on the Moon in the direction that it is orbiting, causing it to speed up. And speeding up an object in orbit makes it orbit farther out. The energy to do this is being stolen from the rotational momentum of the Earth. So as angular momentum is transferred from the rotation of Earth to the orbit of the Moon, the Moon gets farther away and the Earth's day gets longer. But the effect is EXTREMELY small and it will take millions of years for the day to get noticeably longer or the Moon to get noticeably more distant.

Answer 2

There are several factors that you have to understand to see why it is drifting away.

1)The distance of an orbit is determined by the object's speed. If something is in orbit and then it speeds up, it wants to fling away more, so it moves farther out. If it should completely stop, it would fall. If the space shuttle wants to move farther out in orbit, they don't have to fire the thrusters toward the earth to push away from it. They just have to speed up. So that means that if the moon is drifting away from earth, it's speed in orbit is increasing.

2)The strength of the earths gravity affects you less if you are farther away from it. There is a mathematical formula that determines how strong the gravity of an object is on another object, and the distance between them is an important part in determining how strong the gravity is. As the earth turns, the water in the ocean tries to move closer to the moon because of the moon's gravity acting on the water. That's what causes high tide and low tide. High tide is when the water moves toward the moon, and low tide is when the moon is on the other side of the earth. But the water in the oceans is never exactly closest to the moon because the earth is spinning and the water never has a chance to actually catch up. So there is always more water slightly ahead of the moon's position than there is behind where the moon is.
The water is closer to the moon at high tide, and since the high tide is slightly ahead of the moons position, there is always slightly more gravity just ahead of where the moon is. This has the effect of pulling the moon foreward and speeding it up over time.

Right now they estimate that the moon is moving outwards at only about 4cm per year. But if you think about it, as it moves further outwards over the next million years or so, it's gravity will affect the water less, and the high tide and low tide will be less, so the water won't pull the moon foreward as much as it does now.
This effect has been going on for as long as there was a moon and water. It took this long for someone to come up with it.

Answer 3

I think there is some speculation that the moon drifts away from the earth because at one point, before the moon orbited the earth, the earth collided with another body (about the size of mars) and the remnants of that collision pulled together to form the moon. The theory speculates that the moon once orbited so closely to the earth that it actually pulled up on the earth itself, and if you were there, you would have seen mountains rising and falling as the moon passed. Over time, it has drifted away from the momentum of this collision and at some point will stop orbiting and drifting altogether. I don't claim to be an expert at this, but I think some more research on that theory would lead you in the right direction.

Answer 4

Cambelp is 100% correct; basically, the energy of Earth slowing down is transferred to the moon via gravitational pull, increasing the distance between Earth & the moon.

And, no... Tidal waves are badly named - they have nothing to do with tides. They are the result of events here on Earth - land slides, earthquakes, and meteor impacts.

Answer 5

The moon causes tides on the Earth, dragging the Earth's rotation. This causes a gravitational torque back on the moon, raising its orbit.

Answer 6

Moon orbits the earth in elliptical circles, hence the changes in gravitational pulls. Only a decrease in mass of each planet would cause a drift.

Answer 7

No. And I would suspect it is better that the Moon is drifting AWAY rather than TOWARDS!

Answer 8

Yes; it's the tides