Believe it or not,
Earth's satellite, the Moon, is hurling away from the Earth in to a perpetual
darkness of loneliness and despair. It is pulling away from the Earth at about
3.8 centimeters a year! That does seem like a small number per year, but when
the Earth was formed, the Moon sat at a distance of 14,000 miles. Where is it
today? The Moon sits at a staggering 238,900 miles away. That means, that in
the 4.6 billion years of the Earth's life span, the Moon has slipped away and
additional 224,900 miles from Earth.
How will the Moon
Leaving Affect Us?
I know what most of you
are thinking, "Fine then leave you stupid Moon, we don't need you we have
street lights". Well, yeah, most of us take the Moon for granted,
and some of us do not even know what the Moon's role is in our survival here on
Earth.
The Moon and Earth work
together. The Moon keeps our tides, weather, the Earth's rotation, and seasons
stable! I bet now you are asking how does the Moon do all that for us. First,
let us talk about the tides. We know that the tides are the main driving force
pushing the Moon further away from the Earth. This concept can get complicated
but I am going to make this as simple as possible.
The Earth among
everything else in the universe, exerts a gravitational pull, that is what is
keeping the Moon here. On the other hand, the Moon is also exerting gravity on
our planet and that force pulls on the oceans and creates a bulge of water at
the equator. The Earth rotates on it's axis, faster than the Moon orbits the
Earth. The bulge that is created from gravitational forces is slightly ahead of
the Moon, forcing it in to be in a higher orbit. Think about it this way. As a
kid you all probably had someone grab your arms and spin you around. Your feet
come off of the ground and it feels like you will go flying away if they let
you go. Well it is kind of like that with the Earth and Moon.
The Moon actually has an
effect on how fast the Earth rotates. 4.6 billion years ago, the Moon was
14,000 miles away making the days on Earth a mere 5 hours long. So I can safely
assume that every 4.6 billion years, our planet's days will increase 19 hours.
Sadly, with the way the Moon is slipping away, our days will continue to slow
down.
The slowing planet is
can be catastrophic. Think of spinning a basketball on your finger. You have to
spin the ball fast in order to keep it stable. Once the ball slows down it
begins to wobble. Keep this in mind for later. Speaking in terms of the Earth,
the tilt of the axis determines the seasons. In the northern hemisphere, when
it is tilted towards the Sun, that brings longer days and the summer season. On
the other hand, when the axis is tilted away from the Sun, that brings shorter
days and the winter season.
Now back to the spinning
ball on your finger. If the Earth were to slow down and become unstable, that
will subject us to greater temperature changes, drastically different, on each
end of the spectrum. Blazing hot temperatures in the summer and freezing
temperatures in the winter. As humans, if we re around in the next 4.5 billion
years, we are built to adapt to the changing temperatures. Grab a heavy duty
coat and the best AC you can afford and stride through it.
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