Why Doesn't the Moon Fall? Find out about this question

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  1. The Mystery of the Moon
    1. How is the moon near the earth?
    2. The mysterious attraction of the Sun
    3. The moon behaves the same way
    4. Newton and his laws
    5. What are the three basic laws of motion?
    6. Movie Why doesn’t the moon fall into the Earth?
    7. Incredible facts about the Moon
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The Mystery of the Moon

One afternoon in 1665, sitting in the garden of his mother's house in the English county of Lincolnshire.

Isaac Newton saw an apple fall from a tree and began to think that if the apple fell because it had no support, why didn't the Moon fall, which had no support at all?

Moon

It is certain that Isaac Newton was not the first human being to ask himself "why does the moon not fall?

The man has always seen with curiosity that huge stone floating in the sky, without support, threatening to fall on it.

However, Newton was the first man to find the answer: if the Moon does not fall on Earth, like an apple, it is:"Because it is in motion", which counteracts the force of gravity and keeps it in orbit.

That same conjunction of forces keeps the Earth and the planets rotating in their orbits around the Sun permanently.

Also, if the Earth attracts the Moon it does so with less force than an apple because the satellite is much further away.

This is a recording about the strange sounds of the moon that were recorded by the Apollo 10 mission in 1969.

How is the moon near the earth?

The May Super Moon was as much as 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons of 2012. At perigee, the moon lied only 356,955 kilometers (221,802 miles) away from earth.

Some quote this has been the biggest Moon since 1912. However, SuperMoons are regularly observed once a year.

The mysterious attraction of the Sun

According to studies by astronomers on why the moon does not fall on the earth, it is related by the great force of attraction that the sun exerts on the planets and satellites that are in the solar system. It is considered that we can describe this in a very simple way.

Let's consider that we take a stone and put a thread around it and put it around us with the thread, we will see that the force we exert on the stone makes it continue there without falling or reaching the ground and without reaching us and damaging us.

Imagine that we represent the earth and the stone is the natural satellite the moon, the force of rotation by its magnitude and size and its movements makes the moon not collide or fall on the earth.

This same principle is what prevents the Moon from falling on the Earth.

That same conjunction of forces kept the Earth and the planets rotating permanently in their orbits around the Sun.

Did Newton decide to compare the fall of a stone (or an apple) on the earth's surface with the movement of the Moon, and from the comparison of the forces? astronomical? acting on the Moon with the forces? terrestrial? acting on objects in everyday life, he deduced the general law of gravity.

The moon behaves the same way

The Moon behaves in the same way: it is continually falling. Its speed is so great that it can follow the curvature of the Earth and therefore never falls down so as to collide with it.

The same principle is used in artificial satellites, which work just like the Moon.

To launch a satellite into orbit, it must be launched at a fixed speed so that its trajectory can be bent in line with that of the Earth, and thus remain in orbit constantly.

The same cause that forces the Moon to revolve around the Earth, forces the Earth and all other planets to revolve around the Sun.

This central star is of great dimensions and exercises absolute dominion over all interplanetary space.

As the distances are enormous, the movement of the planets and comets around the Sun is very slow, as we have already observed.

The planets travel ellipses that do not differ much from a circumference; the comets, on the other hand, travel very elongated ellipses.

Newton and his laws

Isaac Newton deduced the law of universal gravitation from this comparison between the forces acting on the Moon and those acting on everyday objects.

According to this law, everybody attracts another with a force directly proportional to its masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating them.

That is, if the distance from the Earth to the Moon were to be halved, the force of gravity would increase fourfold between the two.

What are the three basic laws of motion?

The first is that everybody continues in its state of rest or movement unless a force is applied to it.

This force, the second law states, is equal to the mass of the body multiplied by the acceleration it produces in it.

The third law is that if one body exerts a force on another, it will exert an equal and opposite force on the first.

To test his theories, Newton invented an advanced form of calculus, the infinitesimal, which is still used today.

Movie Why doesn’t the moon fall into the Earth?

However large or small, everything falls because of gravity. But somehow the moon seems to be unaffected. It seems to just stay up there. Have you ever wondered why ??

Incredible facts about the Moon

  1. It is located at an average distance from Earth of 238,855 km | 384,400 km
  2. Its rotation period and orbit: 27.32 Earth days
  3. Equatorial radius: 1.737,5 kilometers
  4. Mass in kilograms: 7.35 x 10^22 (0.0123 of the Earth)
  5. Gravity: 0.166 Earth (If you weigh 45 kilograms on Earth, you weigh 7.5 kilograms on the Moon)
  6. Temperature range: -248 to 123 ºC
  7. A person who weighs 100 pounds on the moon would weigh 100 pounds.
  8. Without a space suit on the moon, the blood boils instantly.
  9. More people have reached the Moon than the depths of the oceans.
  10. The last person to step on the moon was in 1972.
  11. The surface of the Moon is smaller than Asia.
  12. Every year the Moon moves away from the Earth by 3.8 centimeters.
  13. The Moon takes 27.3 days to rotate on its axis and orbit the Earth. Although it is a satellite of the Earth, the Moon, with a diameter of approximately 3,475 kilometers, is larger than Pluto. Because of its size, it has a great effect on the planet.
  14. As for its size, the Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun; however, it is 400 times closer to the Earth, hence the apparent size of both bodies seen from the Earth is practically the same.

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