The Moon is Moving Away from the Earth, Study Finds

VIVA – The moon is known to have several benefits for the earth and life on it such as regulating the solar system, to stabilize the earth's axis, and also the moon cycle is important for many species on earth, including marine animals and plants, which use the moon cycle to determine mating times, migration, and other behaviors. But a new study has found that the moon is gradually moving away from Earth, at an accelerating rate.

People who have even a rudimentary understanding of space and astronomy will know that the universe is expanding at a rapid rate, and so is our solar system. In such a scenario, naturally, distances between two bodies in a solar system might change and most likely grow over time.

However, due to a phenomenon known as the Milankovitch cycle, the moon seems to be moving away from the Earth at a faster pace.

Milankovitch cycles simply refer to the small differences between the axis and shape of Earth's orbit as it crosses the Sun, which affects how much sunlight reaches the planet.

Moreover, Milankovitch cycles explain the long-term impact of variations in Earth's movement on its climate. They are named after Milutin Milankovi, a Serbian geophysicist and astrophysicist.

He hypothesized in the 1920s that variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession combined to produce cyclical variations in the intra-annual and latitudinal distributions of solar radiation at the Earth’s surface, and that these orbital forces, along with that of the moon, strongly influenced the Earth’s climatic patterns.

Milankovitch cycles are the accumulated effects of the Earth’s movement changes on its climate over thousands of years. The duration and pace of these cycles determine how far the Moon is from Earth. Scientists estimate that the moon was 60,000 km closer to Earth roughly about 2.46 billion years ago.

Well, to begin with, days will become considerably longer on the Earth. This is one of the major and most noticeable effects of the Moon moving away from the Earth. Secondly, with a significant change in Moon’s gravitational pull on the earth, life on Earth as we know it may cease to exist and redevelop in a completely different way.

Also, while modern-day climate change is a man-made phenomenon, because of Milankovitch cycles, the effects of climate change, mainly global warming, are now more pronounced than ever before.