Do You Ever Wonder? Feel free to ask your own questions.
Why does our Moon not rotate?
Are there other celestial bodies that don't rotate, other than the gaseous ones?
I recall hearing of some drilling operation that struck some objects at around 500 feet or so and they thought it might be a buried city. Anyone else hear of this?
I was gonna say who put fail tags in the title, I wouldn't even believe they'd work anyways. But now that I see it in the thread it was mistyped anyways.
I actually made the assumption a long time ago that the fact that its influenced constantly by the gravity from two bodies instead of just one might be the answer. Our gravity and the sun's. But I actually think I am wrong because there are other things that effect rotation. Its not abnormal for an orbiting mass to not rotate though.
The Moon does rotate. In fact, the Moon takes 27.3 days to turn once on its axis. But the Moon also takes 27.3 days to complete one orbit around the Earth. Because the Moon’s rotation time is exactly the same amount of time it takes to complete an orbit, it always presents the same face to the Earth, and one face away.
Now, the interesting part: why does the Moon spin about its axis at the same rate it orbits? In the distant past, the Earth's tidal pull on the Moon slowed the Moon's rotation to match the time it takes to go around Earth.
That's pretty "tidy".
I'm guessing that the distribution of mass within the moon may have something to do with it's orientation and period of rotation being what it is.
Since gravity is operating toward the Earth on the side we see, I wonder if that's causing more space debris to impact the far side of the Moon than on the side we see?
That's where the rope is attached that keeps the moon in orbit and facing the earth all the time. Of course they hide the pics. You really think NASA wants the negative publicity that would come with revealing that conspiracy?
Very interesting.. Thanks.
Why do you suppose so many of the NASA pics of the back side are secret ?
Seems to be a frontier paradigm involving property rights. After all, the Russians were the first to photograph the far side of the moon in 1957. Does "first to photograph and map a frontier" translate into a claim to ownership?
