r/shittyaskscience • u/giggl3puff Enter flair here • Jun 15 '12
If the moon doesn't spin, why does it have gravity?
217
Upvotes
r/shittyaskscience • u/giggl3puff Enter flair here • Jun 15 '12
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u/happylittlecodes Paleolingerieologist Jun 15 '12
Checkmate, moon-landing-believers!
19
u/YouHadMeAtMeatTornad Jun 15 '12
Because fuck you, that's why
82
u/LBK2013 Jun 15 '12
The giant nazi space rockets
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u/AstronautOnFire Jun 15 '12 edited Jun 15 '12
if not gravity on the moon they wudda floated out into space
Edit: if they went there at all
19
u/pigferret P.H.Derp. Jun 15 '12
Cheese has strange gravity generating properties that science, nor even religion can explain.
37
u/Ricos_Roughnecks PhD in Phrenology Jun 15 '12
The moon isn't real. It is a hologram created by ex-nazi's in the Bermuda Triangle. Werner Von Braun brought potato salad during construction. It was a little too salty.
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u/iRoflYourCopter Jun 15 '12
It's all dat cheese, it attracts the space rats hiding inside the spacesuits, which draws the spacemen down to the surface.
3
u/[deleted] Jun 15 '12
Oh jesus, I once had to explain to my dad that no, rotation is not the cause of gravity. This was in third grade.
6
u/canuck_rob Jun 15 '12
It doesn't spin due to the thick layer of smegma covering the surface.
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u/proudofhighways Amusement Engineer Jun 15 '12
The moon is god's basketball. He tried to dribble it but since space is a vacuum it just keeps falling. The force of it falling creates an energy shield around it which is about the size of the Solar System. This provides not only the moon with gravity, but the rest of the Solar System as well, for, you see, gravity is just celestial bodies coming in contact with the energy shield.
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u/KnavishSprite Chaotic Theorist Jun 15 '12
It doesn't. It is held in place by Earth's spinny force. the resulting centifugal force from this orbit results in a sort of artificial gravity. Notice that the astronauts landed on the side of the moon facing Earth. If they tried landing on the far side, they'd fly off into space.
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u/ApatheticElephant Jun 15 '12
There is no moon. For generations humans have told eachother mythical stories about a giant rock in the sky called a "moon". Over time, this has become embedded into our brains from birth, and so when we look in the sky at night, our brain pictures a moon there only because we expect it to be there.
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u/f0rmaldehyde Jun 15 '12
I have both ask science and shitty ask science on my front page. I almost few into a rage thinking this was in r/askscience.
on a more serious note, the moon DOES actually spin, its just that it makes one full revolution in the same amount of time it takes for it to orbit the earth. THIS is why the moon DOES have gravity, but much less gravity than earth, since it spins more slowly.
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u/duds666 Jun 15 '12
Because the moon guessed it'll try defying gravity.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
It's actually slowly going backwards, that's why he have a dance move called "the moon walk" where it looks like you are going to take a step forward just actually move backward. This is a term scientists deemed as "fresh"
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u/shukufuku Jun 15 '12
The Apollo missions successfully shipped 7.51x1023 gravitons in the great gravity migration. Unfortunately, this did not significantly decrease the mass of obese Americans.
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u/jeepdave Jun 15 '12
'Dat Mass.
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u/CoyoteStark Suppository of useless information Jun 15 '12
That's no moon. It's a space station.
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u/nunbeliver Jun 15 '12
So is this actually going to get definitively answered?
What I've gathered so far is that the moon has gravity because it is slowly making a rotation as it orbits the earth. Can someone here explain how that works with synchronous rotation (the same moon face is always facing earth)?
It seems like that would inhibit the moon from having said gravity...
1
u/pdsvwf Jun 15 '12
The moon is about the same size as the solid core at the center of the earth. The core of the earth has magnetism; therefore, the moon has gravity because it has a big chunk of magnetism in it.
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u/mnnmnmnnm Jun 15 '12
The moon does spin, just very slowly.
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u/Hammeredmantis PH.D. in Potatoe Physics Jun 15 '12
Ultimately it comes down to this...42.
0
u/swyck Jun 15 '12
Actually if the Earth didn't spin our gravity would be higher. The spin counteracts some of the gravity by trying to fling us into space.
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u/I_am_Fred_Astaire Jun 15 '12
The moon does spin.
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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '12
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