how did the ROTATION of the moon around the Earth START?

Question

i know the origin of the moon as well as how it was formed. I'm wondering how it started to revolve around the earth??

Answer 1

Tied up with a string to the sun, God swung it with a force of fun. It's still revolving. Now, remove and run, Eureka, Eureka.....

Answer 2

Moon would have come from the outer space and entered the gravitational field of the earth in a direction parallel to the earth's surface and hence started revolving around the earth.

Answer 3

From what I understand, the moon was formed when a large object hit the Earth early in the planet's history. All sorts of debris was ejected into space. I suppose the debris would first have collected into rings, like those of Saturn, perpendicular to the magnetic axis of the planet. Orbit is achieved when the velocity of an object in freefall, in the direction of the tangent to the planet, is enough to counter gravity's pull toward the planet, but not enough so that the object in orbit just continues on it's way. Eventually the chunks that made up the rings collected together, largely because of their own gravity, and because they were traveling at slightly different speeds. once the collection of stuff got big enough it pulled itself into a sphere under the pressure of it's own gravity.

I've heard that the moon is moving away at a rate of something like a centimeter a year.

Answer 4

Actually, scientist believe Earth was not rotating before the collision with the other planetary body. When the planetary object collided with early Earth, it hit slightly off center. This off-center collision set both the Earth and the resulting orbiting material into a perpetual rotation.

Answer 5

It's theorized that three billion years ago, a Mars sized planetessimal collided into Earth spewing molten debris into orbit around Earth. It, like every other astronomical body, grew in size as it's gravity pulled it together.

As for rotation, it had to do with the shape of our Sun's accretion disk, and it's rotation.

When our Sun began to accrete, it flattenened out into a gaseous disk of debris. It happened to be spinning counter-clockwise. As planetoids began forming after numerous collisions with eachother, they adopted the same rotation because of the law of Conservation of Angular momentum. It's like seeing a rock roll upstream in a river. Can't happen. Objects inside the swirling torrent of gas and dust spun in a similar fashion. Consequently, naturally formed moons are no exception.

All planets and natural moons, when viewed from the North pole, rotate counter-clockwise. Even Uranus and Venus. Uranus and Venus both experienced traumatic collisions early in their forming, and their North Poles dipped below their equator, which gives the appearance of spinning backwards. However, they and all other Solar bodies abide by the counter-clockwise rule.

Answer 6

Ian and Bokononist42 got it right.

The Moon's rotation matches the orbital revolution because all that matter that was ejected into Earth orbit had no other "rotation" except that which happenend by the circumstance of the matter orbiting the Earth in a collective "accretion disk". So lunar rotation logically matched it's orbital period.

Answer 7

gravity