Bye Bye Moon :(

Of course all of you know that the moon is moving further and further away each year by like an inch or some thing. What will Human Kind do to solve this problem? With out our moon we will go crazy. Tides will be a thing of a past and many animals and plants will cease to exist. So are their any ideas on how to prevent the moon from leaving its orbit? The only thing we can do now is tie a chain to the moon and pray it won't leave us

Dont worry it wont leave us. It is receding because the ocean friction forces are causing the earth to lose angular momentum. If you want to conserve it. tell everyone that you know to run in the same direction, with the intention of speeding up earths rotation.

It will be a couple of thousands years before this happens. If the moon manages to go far enough, what will happen to it? Will it start rotating to the sun or just keep on moving on the direction it left?

It will not leave us ever, it will just keep getting farther and farther thats all. If it gets far enough it might be affected by the outer gas giants, but the time frame of such occurrences is so large something else(asteroid) will have perhaps destroyed it.

It Might happen in a long long time from now , but still ideas on how to bring it back to its orginal spot would be nice to hear. I heard that the moon back in the day looked much much larger then it does now a days. Imagine the moon taking up 1/4 of the night sky

Originally posted by SpockO_o
It Might happen in a long long time from now , but still ideas on how to bring it back to its orginal spot would be nice to hear. I heard that the moon back in the day looked much much larger then it does now a days. Imagine the moon taking up 1/4 of the night sky

Yes if you get all the people on earth to run in the same direction LOL, or to attach rockets on the equator to speed up earths rotation. But I doubt we need to worry about such insignificant things. Asteroids and Bin Ladin are a bigger threat.

Well, it moves away at around 3.8cm per year.

Thus taking over 26 thousand years to move a mere 1km further away. Considering the radius of the Lunar orbit is approx 384,000 km. This represents about a 0.00026% increase in the size of the lunar radius.

0.00001% increase every 1,000 years isn't something we really need to be concerned about.

by the time it becomes a serious problem i hink we will be advanced enough to have a valid solution (if we are even still here). there is the common concept of hijacking one of jupiters moon and putting it in orbit or something.

In 1 million years it will have moved less than 0.01% further away.

By the time the sun turns into a red giant it will less than 50% further away than it is at present.

*I'm ignoring the fact that its rate of movement away slows down as it gets further away, so it will actually be much less than that.

By that time we will have more pressing things to be concerned with.

It wont leave us just get further, but if somekind of metal can be found on the moon maybe we could create a magnetic force between us and it. I dunno just an idea...lol. Though i doubt it would ever happen.

[edit on 1-9-2004 by AD5673]

If we're even around then, it'll be a miracle...so I won't worry about moving worlds just yet....

Originally posted by SpockO_o
Of course all of you know that the moon is moving further and further away each year by like an inch or some thing. What will Human Kind do to solve this problem? With out our moon we will go crazy. Tides will be a thing of a past and many animals and plants will cease to exist. So are their any ideas on how to prevent the moon from leaving its orbit? The only thing we can do now is tie a chain to the moon and pray it won't leave us

here's a major conspiracy, the moon is really a secret Russian Death Star , and the crafty Russians are slowly moving it away from Earth so America will be destroyed in about 900,000 years.
Damn those Russians are crafty

On a serious note, the moon isn't moving away fast enough to cause any need for concern, i bet people would be pannicking if the moon was heading towards Earth rather than away

One question. What makes a moon go into the planet, or go away from it? I believe there are no moons that just stay in orbit correct? And why doesn't this happen with planets?

We could somehow tether it to the earth, and then we could pull it in to speed up the earth's rotation, and let it out to slow it down.

Kinda when you break dance and do the backspin pulling your legs in...

my worry for the future isnt the moon, its oxygen. oxygen is going to be gone in like 300 years.

Originally posted by VirusClock
One question. What makes a moon go into the planet, or go away from it? I believe there are no moons that just stay in orbit correct? And why doesn't this happen with planets?

It is because the earth is losing angular momentum due to ocean friction.

Years ago I had to do a research paper on this subject. I found a reference that stated the moon would move further away, slowing it's 'escape', the further it went. It would finally reach a point where it orbited above the same point on Earth at all times. ( Seems like this also meant Earth's rotation would slow?) Only one side of Earth would see the moon. Only one side of Earth would have high tide. The moon would then begin slowly 'falling' back toward Earth. This would of course take a great l-o-n-g time. Then after reaching a certain point, the whole process would start over. After repeating this a few dozen times, the moon would be so stressed, it would disintegrate, giving Earth a ring of rubble. Not being an space expert or mathematical whiz, I cannot verify how probable these events would be.

No more total solar eclipses then! However that would be after around 500 million years when the moon will appear considerably smaller.

"Incidentally, the moon won't move away from the earth forever. The whole process will stop around 15 billion years from now, when the earth's rate of rotation, the moon's rate of rotation and the moon's orbital period are all around 55 days long - at this point, the moon will be about 1.6 times farther from the earth than it is now" : Source

Originally posted by VirusClock
One question. What makes a moon go into the planet, or go away from it? I believe there are no moons that just stay in orbit correct? And why doesn't this happen with planets?

"The tidal force exerted by the Moon on the Earth causes the oceans to bulge. The Earth rotates about its axis faster than the Moon revolves around the Earth, and this rapid rotation carries the tidal bulge of the oceans forward of the Moon in its orbit. So the tidal bulge on the Earth is always slightly ahead of the Moon's own position. This bulge is continuously tugging the Moon forward, increasing the Moon's total energy. Imagine a cowboy's lasso. As the cowboy spins the lasso faster and faster (increasing its total energy), the loop gets wider. The same thing essentially happens to the Moon. The tugging of the Earth's bulge lifts it into a wider orbit around the Earth.

The cowboy has to put some energy into the lasso to make the loop wider. In the Moon's case, the energy comes from the Earth's rotation. Friction between the oceans and the Earth's surface is slowing the Earth's rotation by 0.002 seconds every 100 years. The Earth's rotation will continue to slow, losing energy, until it's rotating so that a solar day equals a lunar month. The Earth's tidal bulge will point directly at the Moon, and the Moon will stop spiraling away from the Earth. The Earth will then keep its same side facing the Moon, just as the Moon presently keeps the same side facing the Earth. This has already happened to Pluto and its Moon, Charon, and is very common in the solar system."
Source

DanTodd
my worry for the future isnt the moon, its oxygen. oxygen is going to be gone in like 300 years.

Ummmmm...No.
Trees give off oxygen and we breath it in and exhale carbon dioxide and which then the trees "breath" that in. Its all apart of the circle of life.

frayed1
Years ago I had to do a research paper on this subject. I found a reference that stated the moon would move further away, slowing it's 'escape', the further it went. It would finally reach a point where it orbited above the same point on Earth at all times. ( Seems like this also meant Earth's rotation would slow?) Only one side of Earth would see the moon. Only one side of Earth would have high tide. The moon would then begin slowly 'falling' back toward Earth. This would of course take a great l-o-n-g time. Then after reaching a certain point, the whole process would start over. After repeating this a few dozen times, the moon would be so stressed, it would disintegrate, giving Earth a ring of rubble. Not being an space expert or mathematical whiz, I cannot verify how probable these events would be.

Thats the most rediculas thing ive ever heard.
things in space are consistently moving farther away from eathother. Yeah our moon going farther away but it wont cause any problems. The earth is moving farther away from the sun and were still able to create global warming.

TACHYON
If you want to conserve it. tell everyone that you know to run in the same direction, with the intention of speeding up earths rotation.

The earth is not a giant treadmill.


If for some reason we ever wanted to "skoot" the moon back closer to us the best way is use out current astroid approach, launch a warhead into space then position it a few hundred yards away from the moon on its current "backside" then detonate it, the force of the huge blast would very slowly "skoot" her closer to earth.

Murcielago the earth is a giant treadmill. Seems that other benefits will be reduced risk of cardiovascular disease besides the moon receding slower.