Currently the moon is moving away from earth. But eventually will it fall back to earth ? Provide references.?

Question

Currently the moon is moving away from earth. But eventually will it fall back to earth ? Provide references.?

Answer 1

It will not eventually fall back to Earth.

Answer 2

earth's rotation is slowing down and the moon is moving away. eventually the earth's rotation will be tidally locked to teh moon, just as the moon's is to earth's rotation. once this happens the sun's tides will become more important, and they will cause the moon to approach earth again.

the minimum bound on the time for this to happen is about 10 times the age of the sun, so it's not likely to happen.

Answer 3

In the book "life and death of planet earth"  (or was it "Rare Earth" ???  Brownlee and Wards original work, the idea that the moon will crash into the Earth during the suns red giant stage is briefly discussed.  The atmosphere of the sun would cause orbital decay of the moon and a possible collision. Since all life on earth would have been extinct at that point for about 3 billion years, the threat isn't exactly compelling.  Earths orbit might also decay and I suppose its possible we could spiral into the sun.

Answer 4

The earth and moon acquire mass continuously from particles in space, and thus their mass, and therefore gravitional fields will continue to increase until they collide.

Answer 5

No.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/07...

Answer 6

if the moon is going away, then it will carry on moving.

It's a crude way of looking at it but take Newton's first law... a body will remain in it's direction of motion with constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force

since the moon is moving away, it will only ever come back if an external force makes it come back.

That could be anything from a asteroid hitting the moon deflecting it back towards earth, or a star passing near our solar system disrupting the orbital equillibria

Answer 7

No. If it is moving away it would continue to do so. So the only way it could fall to earth is if somthing really massive could drag the moon back. which is not likely to happen. so the answer to your question is No.

Answer 8

no because the moon is too big for gravey to pull it in so its moving away and in 7623904612390 years there will be no moon

Answer 9

Eventually the moon will fall back *towards* Earth but not collide with it. Here's why -- in about 3- to 3.5-billion years our sun will swell into its red giant stage. The solar wind of this bloated sun will become much more intense around Earth and the moon, placing more drag on the moon and slowing its orbital velocity. It will then move towards Earth until it reaches a point known as the Roche limit and literally shatter into trillions of fragments. These fragments will then, for a time, form a ring around Earth.