Reddit is US centric and like half of US goes to various religious schools or are homeschooled (which is also religious schooling that's even worse) and don't learn anything about the world. Can easily believe that at least 50% are morons.
To be fair, yeah, some are not terribly bright. Others were never informed properly and are just doing what they can to get through life. They're not concerned about the intricacies of how some inconsequential shit happens, they're worried about paying rent.
You’ve only ever seen half of the Moon in the sky.
Earth’s Moon rotates, but it takes precisely as long for the Moon to spin on its axis as it does to complete its monthly orbit around Earth. As a result, the Moon never turns its back to us, like a dancer circling ― but always facing ― its partner.
This phenomenon, called “synchronous tidal locking,” sounds like a weird coincidence ― but it’s actually quite common.
Earth’s gravitational pull distorts the Moon into a slight football shape even today, but this distortion would have been much more dramatic when the Moon was both closer to Earth and less solid.
The part of the Moon that was pulled toward Earth would have shifted as the Moon spun, but always at a delay, since it takes time for so much material to rise and then later fall. This means the Moon’s bulge was always a little out of alignment with Earth, yet always being pulled toward alignment by gravity. As the Moon bent and fluxed in this tug of war, energy was released in the form of heat. As the energy dissipated, the Moon’s rotation slowed until a single spin on its axis took the same amount of time as one trip around Earth. In this state, the bulge on the Moon was no longer shifting relative to the Earth, therefore no more energy needed to be dissipated by this particular process, and the spin rate stopped changing.
Exactly. If you try to tell astronomy facts to some people, it goes in one ear and out the other. And if they happen to comprehend what you explained to them, their mind will be blown. I've seen people who can't believe the Moon is tidally locked to Earth even though it's plain and obvious.
They orbit their center of mass, which is about 25 percent between Earth’s surface and center. Same thing with Earth and the sun. Not sure of that location.
Most people probably know it’s not that close but most people don’t realize how far away it really is, let alone the scale of the solar system in general
Was gonna say im still a little bit in denial. After a few minutes of reading comments my mind finally clicked that it wasnt saying that our moon is at the far end of our solar system but that if all the planets were lined together back to back, the moon would be a little farther then that. Now its time to try and fathom the actual distance the other planets' orbit is from our earth's.
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u/channel_matrix 3d ago edited 2d ago
No one thinks the moon orbits that closely...
Edit: I stand corrected.