Just hit me now, and maybe I'm way past my bedtime, but I always thought the rotation creates the gravity on planets. But the moon does not spin/turn. So how does the astronauts stay on the moon (if they were ever there)?
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (40)
sorted by:
Mass generates gravity. Not rotation. The exact mechanism that occurs due to mass is still up for debate.
The moon does rotate. It’s phase locked because the time it takes to rotate one time on its own axis is almost perfectly equivalent to the time it takes to orbit the earth one time.
This phenomenon is called orbital resonance and occurs with other moons in our system, although our moon has the only 1:1 resonance.
Frequencies like to synchronize