The moon is round or. Why is the moon not always round?

Site development 20.02.2024
Site development

Our planet is beautiful and amazing; there is no such planet in the entire universe. In its firmament you can observe different luminaries. During the day, the sun shines brightly on the Earth, warming all living things with its rays, and at night we see how Moon shines through the windows of our houses. The moon has always been mysterious; in ancient times, people watched with fear and trepidation as it changed its face. Eclipses caused them even greater horror, when the entire Earth was plunged into complete darkness for a short time.

The moon itself cannot emit light, it reflects the light of the Sun. Why do people think that the moon is changing? The Moon is a satellite of our planet and revolves around it. We can always see the Moon only from one side, as if it were tied to the Earth with a rope. We can only see the illuminated part of the Moon. For about four weeks, the Moon makes its procession around the Earth. What we observe as a change in the appearance of the Moon or phase is actually a change in the illumination of the Moon as seen from the Earth. In four weeks, a complete cycle of changes in the appearance of the Moon is completed. At the beginning of the cycle, the Moon is new and it is in the same direction from us as the Sun.

The side of the Moon, which is turned towards the Earth, is dark and completely lost in the rays of the Sun; in this phase the Moon is not visible in the sky. This lunar phase is called - new moon.

The next phase has a name - the first quarter, and the Moon passes the fourth part of its path, then we see the half-illuminated disk of the Moon.

The third phase of the moon is called full moon, The Moon is on the opposite side of the Sun and we see the entire disk of the Moon illuminated by the sun's rays. The final phase is the last quarter, and the Moon's disk is also half illuminated.

To correctly determine what phase the Moon is in, you need to know one interesting rule. If its sickle looks like the bow of the letter “P”, then the Moon is growing. When its arch looks in the opposite direction and resembles the letter “C”, then the Moon is aging. This is very easy to remember and you can always determine whether the young Moon has just begun its journey or the old Moon is completing its cycle.

Sometimes you can observe amazing phenomena in the sky called eclipses.

Scientists call a solar eclipse the phenomenon when the disk of the Moon completely covers the Sun. It is very interesting to observe such a phenomenon, but you need to take a piece of dark glass with you, through which the eclipse will be visible in all its glory.

Another interesting sight in science is called lunar eclipse. This happens when the shadow of the Earth covers the disk of the Moon and instead of the luminous lunar disk one can see a dark circle. If the orbits of the Earth and the Moon coincided, we could observe an eclipse of the Sun at new moon and an eclipse of the Moon at full moon at each revolution. This does not happen because the plane on which the Moon's orbit is located is tilted by five degrees.

To the question Why is the Moon round? given by the author Country road the best answer is Celestial bodies are round because they are formed due to gravitational forces. Roughly speaking, every particle of a celestial body tries to be closer to the center. Therefore it turns out to be a ball. Cosmology considers two hypotheses: A) condensation from ownerless matter (interstellar hydrogen), exactly the same as planets, stars, etc.; B) under the influence of a gravitational carousel, a “droplet” came off from the still liquid Earth, turning into a natural satellite. The moon is always the same - round. But to us from Earth it seems that it is either half a ball or just a narrow crescent - the Moon. That is, the Moon is more than half, but less than a full sphere. We say that the Moon is waxing or waning. On a new moon we don’t see it at all, but on a full moon it is absolutely round. Why is that? It's all about the position of the Moon around the Earth and relative to the Sun, this is called the phases of the Moon for short. During the new moon, the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun, on the same line with them. During the full moon, it is also on the same line with them, but at the same time the Moon is behind the Earth

Answer from I-beam[guru]
because that’s how it was originally formed


Answer from Vasily Mitrofanov[guru]
Yes a paradox! The moon is round, and there are aliens in all corners!


Answer from Staff[guru]
Most celestial bodies are round!


Answer from Roman Tick[guru]
Because the table is wooden))


Answer from Dadaware[guru]
We teach physics.


Answer from Abstract@ktsiya V.I.[guru]
look more closely...it's not round but oval)
and here are two points of view for your consideration)):
1)
There were answers about the spherical shape (gravitational forces in a vacuum force the liquid to take on a shape with a minimum surface area), but there is no single point of view regarding the method of formation. Cosmology considers two hypotheses: A) condensation from ownerless matter (interstellar hydrogen), exactly the same as planets, stars, etc.; B) under the influence of a gravitational carousel, a “droplet” came off from the still liquid Earth, turning into a natural satellite.
2)
she is sickle-shaped... although no, now it’s round... and she also has a mouth, nose and eyes... - This is the head of the great ancient hero!
It was once hot, and it was also rotating, so it took on a spherical shape.
good luck in choosing))


Answer from Elizaveta Chereshnyuk[newbie]
The moon is similar in shape to a lemon


Answer from Alex alex[newbie]
in order for it to become round it must at least spin, but it doesn’t spin,


Answer from Sergei Kaletsky[active]
because all planets are round


Answer from Serzh777[guru]
because it is a planet, and there are no square planets!)


Answer from Bob[guru]
Because the earth is also round


Answer from Farkhad[guru]
The rounded shape is inherent in all celestial bodies with gravity. This is the most energy-efficient form.

Moon phases

On a clear, cold autumn night you go outside. The Moon had just risen, a huge round orange Moon. A few days later, you notice that the moon is no longer as round. A few more days pass - the Moon has turned into a horned moon. After two weeks, the Moon disappears altogether.

Why does the Moon change shape?

What happened? Why does the Sun always turn its round sparkling face towards us, and the Moon has phases? The moon passes them regularly every month, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing, like a balloon that is being inflated and then deflated.

In reality, of course, the Moon always remains a ball, invariably hard and rocky. What actually changes is the amount of the illuminated surface of the Moon that we can see.

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The Moon makes one revolution around its axis in almost the same time that it makes one revolution around the Earth (in 27/3 days), so the Moon almost always faces the Sun with only one side. But it is wrong to think that eternal night reigns on one side of the moon. Although slowly, the change of day and night still occurs.

Why does the moon glow?

What we call moonlight is actually sunlight reflected by the gray, rocky lunar surface. The Moon moves with the Earth around the Sun and is illuminated by the Sun. As the Moon moves, we see either a larger or smaller part of the illuminated surface of the Moon, that is, the position of the Moon in relation to the Earth is changing all the time.

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What we call the "phases" of the Moon are the angles at which we see the illuminated part of the Moon. When we see it completely, this position is called the full moon. When, after a few days, the Moon becomes “defective,” we already see part of its illuminated half (the first quarter after the full moon).

Then the Moon decreases by half, then a beautiful horned moon appears. When the completely dark half of the Moon comes into our field of vision, it seems to disappear altogether. This position is called the new moon. And indeed, after a short time we again see a silver sickle in the sky, and the illuminated half of the Moon again enters our field of vision. The moon continues to increase in size and the whole cycle repeats. If you look closely at the crescent of the new Moon, you can see the rest of it, although it looks very dark.

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Why do eclipses happen?

To see the full Moon every night, you need to launch a rocket into space and hover in it over the illuminated half of the Moon, which will be clearly visible even when it is hidden from the eyes of the inhabitants of the Earth. Planets also have phases. Scientists, looking at Mercury and Venus through a telescope, observed them in the form of horned months. When the Earth was photographed from space, spacecraft often transmitted space images in which our planet also looks like a damaged Moon.

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The Moon is a natural satellite of the Earth. And, as we have already found out in the framework of the relevant thematic entries on our website, it is called natural because it has a natural origin.

Today we want to consider several more very interesting issues related to our satellite in space.

Why is the moon round?

The first question that we want to consider concerns directly the shape of this celestial body. Why is the moon round? The fact is that most of the objects known to us, located in relative proximity to the Earth, are round in shape. This includes the Sun and other planets of our solar system. And there is a completely accessible and rational explanation for why planets and satellites have a round shape.

As scientists have found out, who have had a lot of time to put forward hypotheses and prove them, most cosmic bodies, planets and satellites, have a spherical shape due to the fact that this is a consequence of the influence of gravitational forces on the particles that make up celestial bodies.

All this happens due to the fact that all particles are attracted to the central part of the body, accumulating into an array that acquires a spherical shape over time.

However, it should be noted that the Moon is not completely round. It looks more like an ellipse.

Why are craters on the Moon round?

Another question related to our natural satellite that we wanted to consider concerns the craters present on the surface of the Moon. All of us, in cloudless weather, have the opportunity to quite clearly observe the surface of the Moon. Even without the use of telescopes, spots can be seen on the lunar crust - these are craters.

Not everyone knows about this, but craters were formed on the surface of the Moon due to the collision of the Earth's satellite with meteorites. Millions of years passed before the Moon acquired the appearance that we have the opportunity to observe today. However, why are craters round in shape? Let's look into this issue.

The fact is that, regardless of the shape of the body that crashes into the surface, the explosion from the collision with the meteorite and the wave from the impact form the shape of a frozen circle at the point of impact. Therefore, if the falling meteorite does not pass tangentially, the craters in the Moon's crust after the fall remain exclusively round. Only the sizes of the circles can differ, which are directly proportional to the size of the meteorite itself that formed the crater.

THE MOON IS TOO PERFECTLY ROUND TO BE A SHARD PLANETS - THIS IS MY OBJECTION TO THE AMERICAN SCIENTIST

I am not at all convinced by the theory - that the Moon is a piece of a collision between the Earth and another planet - why? it is too perfect a ball - it is clear that it was formed in space and was drawn into the Earth’s orbit rather due to its own slight collision with it - it may be objected that the irregularities after the impact were then decorated with dust from space... but the Earth is no less ancient creation and its the dust did not turn the planet into a completely round one! - it looks like a compressed lump of paper - all in potholes and the fact that it is round is a decoration made of water... which means time that did not make the Earth round is not capable of making the Moon round - and if so, then it is clearly not a stub after some kind of impact - from another planet... - and a guest from outer space...

Mysteries of the Moon's Birth Revealed

A small excess of tungsten in the rocks of the Earth's satellite helped geophysicists verify the correctness of the assumption

Geophysicists have received new confirmation of the hypothesis that appeared in the 70s. last century. According to it, the Moon was formed from fragments resulting from the collision of the Earth and a planet the size of Mars about 4.5 billion years ago. This idea was prompted by the similar composition of our planet and its satellite, as well as the almost complete absence of an iron core on the Moon.

Photo by Patrick Pleul / globallookpress.com

However, it was a difficult struggle to prove the validity of this hypothesis. For example, some scientists argued that the Earth and the Moon were formed simultaneously, others - that the Moon broke away from the rapidly rotating Earth, and others - that they were formed in different parts of the solar system, and when the Moon came close to the Earth, it was captured by it.

But American professor Richard Walker managed to bring new arguments in favor of the hypothesis of a collision between the Earth and a large cosmic body. The missing compelling argument was one of the tungsten isotopes. It was the tungsten-182 isotope, found in the soils of the Moon and Earth, which appeared after the decay of hafnium-182, that allowed Walker to finally verify the validity of this hypothesis.

The scientist theoretically proved that if the Moon was really born after the collision of the Earth with Theia, then the proportion of this isotope in lunar rocks should be higher. And then he discovered this while examining rock samples brought to Earth by the Apollo 16 expedition. Moon rocks actually contain more tungsten-182 than the Earth's interior.

From which the geophysicist concluded that the Moon was born during the collision of the Earth with Theia, and their ejected matter was thoroughly mixed, judging by the lack of differences in the proportions of other isotopes.

Theia, a planet that previously existed in the solar system, was approximately the same distance from the Sun as the Earth. This is what allows scientists to believe that its chemical composition was very close to the composition of our planet.

Alexander BOLOTOV

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