Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The Earth Has More Than 1 Moon

Neat. I guess this explains all the werewolves...

"most asteroids that are captured by Earth’s gravity would not orbit Earth in neat circles. Instead, they would follow complicated, twisting paths. This is because a minimoon would not be tightly held by Earth’s gravity, so it would be tugged into a crazy path by the combined gravity of Earth, the Moon and the Sun. A minimoon would remain captured by Earth until one of those tugs breaks the pull of Earth’s gravity, and the Sun once again takes control of the object’s trajectory. While the typical minimoon would orbit Earth for about nine months, some of them could orbit our planet for decades."

Via Reddit.com
 

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