The moon rotates once per revolution around the Earth, but that’s not a coincidence. Somehow the rotation and revolution are connected to each other. Some force is keeping them the same. How exactly does that work?

  • jasparagus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Here’s a good explainer:

    What is tidal locking? https://phys.org/news/2015-11-tidal.html

    Basically, the moon acted like a spinning (unbalanced) wheel, and eventually stopped with the “heavy” side pointing “down” towards Earth. I.e. think of the moon as orbiting Earth with the heavy side staying pointed at Earth.