MOSCOW, June 22 - RIA Novosti. Assumptions that the Moon in the future may leave the orbit of the Earth's satellite contradicts the postulates of celestial mechanics, Russian astronomers interviewed by RIA Novosti say.

Earlier, many Internet media, citing the words of Gennady Raikunov, general director of the "space" Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering, reported that in the future the Moon could leave the Earth and become an independent planet moving in its own orbit around the Sun. According to Raikunov, in this way the Moon can repeat the fate of Mercury, which, according to one hypothesis, was a satellite of Venus in the past. As a result, according to the general director of TsNIIMash, the conditions on Earth may become similar to those of Venus and will be unsuitable for life.

"It sounds like some kind of nonsense," Sergei Popov, a researcher at the Sternberg State Astronomical Institute of Moscow State University (GAISh), told RIA Novosti.

According to him, the Moon is really moving away from the Earth, but very slowly - at a speed of about 38 millimeters per year. "Over a few billion years, the period of the Moon's revolution will simply increase by one and a half times, and that's it," Popov said.

"The moon cannot completely leave. She has nowhere to get energy in order to escape," he said.

Five week day

Another employee of the SAI Vladimir Surdin said that the process of moving the Moon away from the Earth would not be endless, eventually it would be replaced by an approach. "The statement "The moon can leave the Earth's orbit and turn into a planet" is incorrect," he told RIA Novosti.

According to him, the removal of the Moon from the Earth under the influence of the tides causes a gradual decrease in the speed of rotation of our planet, and the speed of the departure of the satellite will gradually decrease.

In about 5 billion years, the radius of the lunar orbit will reach its maximum value - 463 thousand kilometers, and the duration of the earth's day will be 870 hours, that is, five modern weeks. At this moment, the speed of rotation of the Earth around its axis and the Moon in orbit will become equal: the Earth will look at the Moon on one side, just as the Moon is now looking at the Earth.

“It would seem that tidal friction (the deceleration of its own rotation under the influence of lunar gravity) should disappear in this case. However, solar tides will continue to slow down the Earth. But now the Moon will be ahead of the Earth’s rotation and tidal friction will begin to slow down its movement. The Earth, however, is very slow, since the strength of the solar tides is small," the astronomer said.

"Such a picture is drawn to us by celestial-mechanical calculations, which no one, I think, will dispute today," Surdin noted.

The loss of the moon will not turn the Earth into Venus

Even if the Moon disappears, this will not turn the Earth into a copy of Venus, Alexander Bazilevsky, head of the laboratory for comparative planetology at the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RIA Novosti.

"On the conditions on the surface of the Earth, the departure of the moon will have little effect. There will be no ebb and flow (they are mostly lunar) and the nights will be moonless. We will survive," the agency's source said.

“On the path of Venus, with a terrible warming up, the Earth can go because of our stupidity - if we bring it with greenhouse gas emissions to a very strong warming up. And even then I’m not sure that we will be able to ruin our climate so irreversibly,” the scientist said.

According to him, the hypothesis that Mercury was a satellite of Venus, and then left the orbit of the satellite and became an independent planet, was really put forward. In particular, American astronomers Thomas van Flandern and Robert Harrington wrote about this in 1976, in an article published in the journal Icarus.

"Calculations have shown that this is possible, which, however, does not prove that it was so," Bazilevsky said.

In turn, Surdin notes that "later works have practically rejected it (this hypothesis)."

The influence of the Moon on the Earth is difficult to overestimate. In particular, it keeps the Earth at an inclination of 66 degrees from the orbital plane. Thanks to this, the climate in most of our planet is quite good.

It is impossible to predict which side the Earth will turn to the Sun if the Moon leaves to wander through space. Presumably, in the literal sense, it will lie on its side. Glaciers will melt, deserts will freeze, the ebb and flow will be forgotten. To understand how this threatens all living things on the planet, it is enough to watch any apocalyptic film.

Meanwhile, Russian ufologists have already taken the version with the removal of the moon on a pencil and put forward a theory in their own style.

Ufologists have long considered the Moon as the closest base of alien civilizations to us, ufologist Yuri Senkin told Vecherka. - The fact that telescopes, lunar rovers and people who have visited the Moon several times, they were not caught there, is simply explained - we explored only one side of the satellite. The reverse side has not been studied.

It is difficult to say what caused the distance of the Moon, but it is possible that this is the work of hands - or that they have instead of hands - aliens. And even if this is true, it is unlikely that this was done in order to harm our civilization. Alien races may pursue completely different tasks. The moon, for example, is rich in resources, including those that are in terrible shortage on Earth.

The journalists of "Vecherka" were not inspired at all by the prospect of losing the Earth's satellite: firstly, it would be rather boring without it at night, and secondly, they would like to live longer. Therefore, we immediately turned to the State Astronomical Institute named after P.K. Sternberg for clarification.

Head of the Department of the Moon and Planets, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Vladislav Shevchenko laughed for a long time after listening to the question. Asked to repeat. And laughed non-stop again.

Oh storytellers! he said breathlessly. - But seriously, the Moon is really moving away from the Earth, but you need to understand that this has been happening for four billion years, since the Moon itself was formed.

According to Shevchenko, the removal of the Earth's satellite is a completely natural physical phenomenon - we recall the school curriculum in physics - called inertia. Imagine that you are riding a carousel. Spinning faster and faster, you feel how you begin to tilt in the direction opposite to the axis of the carousel. And if you do not grab onto something, you can simply be thrown out. But the moon has nothing to cling to. The speed with which it rotates around the Earth sets such inertia that the Earth's gravitational field is powerless to hold this ball. And you need to understand that the earth's gravity affects our satellite less and less as it moves away.

According to calculations, the Moon is moving away from the Earth by about 3.8 centimeters per year, continues Vladislav Shevchenko. - Now the distance to it is 384 thousand kilometers. And when the moon was just forming, it was about 60 thousand kilometers. Give a hand! It took about four billion years for this distance to increase six times.

And it will take several million more years for the Moon to move away, ceasing to completely cover the Sun during an eclipse. Therefore, it is too early to worry about this. Just know: when this happens, Vechernyaya Moskva will notify you personally in the first place.

There are several versions of the origin of the Moon, but in recent decades, scientists have leaned towards the theory of a giant collision. It happened about 4.6 billion years ago: the hypothetical planet Theia collided with the Earth at a tangent, pulling out a huge piece from our long-suffering planet. The Earth immediately boiled, almost turning inside out, and the part of it that Theia vomited was captured by the Earth's gravitational field so that, after billions of years, we could lift our heads and say: "The moon is awesome today!"

INTERESTING FACT

Inhabitants of the southern hemisphere see the Moon in reverse: they grow to the left, decrease to the right.

The first artificial satellite of the Sun was the Soviet station "Luna-1" in 1959. Due to an error in the calculations, she slipped past the Earth's satellite at the second cosmic speed.

The smartphone that your boy neighbor walks around with is many times more powerful than the computer that controlled the landing of astronauts on the moon.

The moon is now moving away from the earth. But when the day and month are equal, it will begin to approach. Will the moon fall to earth or not?

What is the future of the Earth-Moon system? If we extrapolate modern data on the rate of removal of the Moon, we can draw the following conclusion. The duration of the day and month will increase all the time. At the same time, the day will grow faster than the month, and in the distant future they will equalize. As a result, the Moon will always be visible from only one side of the Earth.

A system in which the planet and the satellite all the time “look” at each other with the same side already exists in the solar system. These are Pluto and Charon. This is the most stable state in the system of TWO bodies. But the Earth is much closer to the Sun. Tidal forces from the Sun also slow down the rotation of the Earth: the amplitude of solar tides is only two and a half times less than that of the moon. Therefore, after the Earth and the Moon rotate synchronously, the Sun will continue to slow down the rotation of the Earth. The Earth will begin to rotate around its axis SLOWER than the Moon in its orbit. And this means that the Moon will be BELOW the synchronous orbit. Therefore, it will begin to fall to the Earth.

Will all this end in a grand catastrophe in the history of the Earth?

A good scenario for a horror movie: the moon is getting closer, and it is impossible to stop it. After all, if the satellite is below the synchronous orbit, then its irreversible fall begins. Or not?

A satellite below the synchronous orbit will “fall” onto the planet, and one above it will “fly away” from it. True, there is a significant clarification here. This will only happen if the planet's rotational speed remains constant. This is true for small satellites. And for the big ones? At what mass of the satellite can it already be considered large?

The answer is simple: if the satellite's orbital angular momentum is comparable in magnitude to the planet's own angular momentum. In this case, the removal or approach of the satellite will significantly change the speed of rotation of the planet.

A simple calculation shows that in the Earth-Moon system, most of the total angular momentum falls on the Moon, and not on the Earth. Indeed, the angular momentum of the Earth is:

Here I= 0.33 is the dimensionless moment of inertia of the Earth, M- its mass R is the equatorial radius, V is the linear velocity at the equator.

The orbital moment of the moon is:

Here m is the mass of the moon, r is the average radius of its orbit, v is the orbital velocity.

The mass of the Moon is 80 times less than the Earth, its orbital radius is 60 times greater than the radius of the Earth, and the orbital speed (1 km / s) is 2 times greater than the equatorial speed of the Earth's rotation (500 m / s). Therefore, the orbital momentum of the Moon is about four times greater than the angular momentum of the Earth. Therefore, the Moon, under no circumstances, will not be able to fall to the Earth, even if in the distant future it will be in a synchronous orbit.

As an example, suppose the Moon is in its current orbit and the Earth does not rotate on its axis at all. In this case, kinetic energy will be transferred from the Moon to the Earth. The Earth will gradually begin to rotate, and the Moon will approach it: fall to the Earth. But it won't fall.

How close is the moon to the earth?

The orbital angular momentum is proportional to the radius of the orbit and the velocity. The orbital velocity is inversely proportional to the square root of the radius. Therefore, the orbital momentum is proportional to the square root of the radius. If the radius of the orbit is reduced by two percent, then the momentum will be reduced by one percent. And this percentage, by virtue of conservation, will be transferred to the Earth. Considering that the modern period of the Earth's rotation in one day corresponds to 25 percent of the lunar orbital moment, then one percent will correspond to a period of 25 days. This period will be shorter than the lunar month, which, due to Kepler's third law, will decrease only by three percent and will be approximately 28 days. That is, the Earth will rotate FASTER than the Moon. Therefore, the Moon will NOT be able to approach the Earth even by 2 percent, but will approach a little less.

The future of the Earth-Moon system in general terms is this.

At first, the Moon will continue to move away from the Earth, receiving momentum from it. But the Earth has not much angular momentum left - 25% of the Moon's orbital angular momentum. Therefore, the maximum that the Moon can get is to increase its angular momentum by 25%. The radius of its orbit will increase by 1.5 times (1.25 squared). And the lunar month will increase by about 2 times (according to Kepler's Third Law, you need to raise 1.5 to the power of 3/2) and will be 60 days. Accordingly, the Earth day will also increase to 60 days. This is the MAXIMUM distance that the Moon can move away from the Earth.

How long will it take the Moon to move away from the Earth at this distance (half the radius of its current orbit)?

The distance to the moon is 380 thousand km, the removal rate is 3.8 cm/year. It is easy to calculate that half of the radius of the Moon will pass in five billion years if it moves away at a constant speed. But the removal rate will gradually decrease. So we have to throw in a few more billion years.

What will we do next?

The sun will continue to slow down the Earth's rotation (solar tides).

But as soon as the rotation of the Earth slows down, the Moon will approach a little bit and the rotation will speed up again. The sun will slow it down again, and the moon will approach and speed it up again, and so on. The Earth is, in a sense, lucky to have the Moon. At the time of its youth, when our planet rotated very quickly, it transferred its momentum to the moon and thus preserved it. Indeed, under the action of lunar tides, the angular momentum of the Earth is not lost, but only redistributed in the Earth-Moon system. And under the influence of weaker solar tides is lost. But these tides can only take angular momentum from the Earth. But for a long time the bulk of the angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system has been concentrated in the orbital motion of the Moon. And the solar tides can't do anything with it. The Earth has given the lion's share of its rotation to the Moon, and there this share is safe and sound. And after many billions of years, the Moon will gradually return the rotation of the Earth.

Among all the moons of the solar system, the Earth's satellite is the most unique. Due to its proximity to the Earth, as well as its size, the Moon gives our planet a stable and stable position in its eternal journey in orbit. That is, it must be said that the Earth-Moon bond maintains its position in outer space in a more or less uniform rotation.

The formation of the Moon falls on about 4.5 billion years ago - according to the latest information from scientists, the Moon has become younger, dropping several million years. I must say that the history of the formation of the moon is amazing. And the Earth's satellite itself is extremely important for the existence of life on the planet. However, the Earth is also important for finding the Moon in its orbit.

As has been described more than once, billions of years ago, a cosmic object of no less size crashes into a huge protoplanetary substance. That's when, from the molten mass - and it was the Earth - and pulls out huge pieces of matter from the mass of the planet. Thrown into space, solid rocks are held back by the gravity of the Earth.

In an effort to escape from the captivity of the Earth's gravity, but not having the strength to do so, they begin to gather into one large object. And under the influence of rotational forces, they turn into a ball. So, our Blue Planet has acquired an important component for the education and preservation of life.

It's amazing how accurately the space object arrived in time. No less surprising is the fact that someone's hand placed both space objects in exactly the position and those points where it was necessary for the flourishing of life on Earth.

Prior to the time of the impact and the formation of the Moon, our planet was not yet blue, and rotated 4 times faster than it does now. The Earth's axis was at an inclination of 10 degrees, and the Earth's day at that time was very short - only 6 hours. And the angle of inclination affected the average temperature on Earth.

At this time, the Moon had not yet entered its current orbit, and was closer to the Earth by 12,000 times. By exerting a strong influence on the planet with powerful gravity. Soon, oceans began to form, and tidal friction began to slow the Earth's rotation. For 3 billion years, the formation of continents continued, and the planet's rotation rate continued to decrease - reaching up to 18 hours a day. After another half a billion years, the Earth's day reaches 222 hours, and adding seconds a year, they reach 24 hours.

Why is the Moon so necessary for the Earth.

In fact, the Moon plays a very important role in the life of our planet. Firstly, it should be noted the gravity of the satellite, acting in conjunction with the Moon-Earth, our planet is in a stable orbit. And also our Blue Planet, thanks to the Moon, received an angle of inclination of 23 degrees.

Such a degree of inclination can be called optimal, nature, as if specially taken care of the comfort of human life on Earth. Indeed, thanks to this angle, a rather narrow temperature range is kept on the planet. The sun's rays emitted by our luminary spread evenly over the globe, which creates good conditions for life on Earth. The stability of sunrises and sunsets is also associated with the Moon on Earth, supporting the change of seasons we are used to.

The Moon also has a strong influence on the water basins of the Earth. Ebb and flow, all this passes under the watchful eye of our satellite. And also the Moon keeps at the equator a 4 meter rise in the water level.

What happens if the moon leaves the earth. What threatens the Earth with the distance of the Moon.

It is impossible to assert that the Moon is eternal above the Earth, and it may happen that the Earth's satellite will take a more distant orbit relative to our planet. Or even go into free swimming through the expanses of space. After all, as you know, the Moon, although by a small amount, is still moving away from the Earth.

Specialists have been observing the Moon for almost half a century. Even the first American astronauts left a reflector on the satellite. This helped to accurately measure the distance between the Moon and the Earth. And on Earth, the satellite was observed by modern technology.

And experts were able to answer the question of how far the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It turned out that this is about 4 centimeters per year - not such a small value, given that every year the distance is increasing. However, this is not a constant amount of removal. As you know, the distance between the satellite and our planet is not constant. Hence the magnitude of the removal is inaccurate.

Periodically, during the distance of the Moon, the earth's axis changes the angle of inclination by 2-3 degrees, in one direction or another from the axis. But even this, a small value of a couple of degrees, responds to natural disasters on Earth. And if the chain connecting the Earth and the Moon is broken, then two space objects, having lost their reciprocal attracting force, will simply scatter in the expanses of space. Released as if from a sling.

About 100 thousand years ago, a slight change in the angle of the axis led to the fact that the sun's rays began to fall differently. This led to an ecological catastrophe - where the forests once raged, wastelands scorched by the Sun formed. And as scientists suggest, it could have caused the migration of the ancient inhabitants of the planet from Africa to the North. And in Europe and North America, this did lead to the beginning of the ice age, lasting for millennia.

And if the Moon breaks the Moon-Earth chain, then the time of catastrophes will come on the planet. The truth is very short. Huge masses of water, held by the Moon, will immediately break free, and with a mighty, unrestrained force, move deep into the planet. Sweeping and destroying everything in its path, the first to experience it for themselves will be the residents of New York and Rio de Janeiro.

In addition, having lost lunar protection, the Earth can fall under the gravitational influence of another planet. And then there is no need to talk about stability on Earth. The planet will have a different slope, and changeable. This will lead to large temperature fluctuations. There will also be a redistribution of water basins - the level may increase by hundreds of meters.

However, the Earth also affects the Moon, for example, the rotation of our satellite has slowed down to one revolution per month. The Earth also slows down its rotation, this is influenced by the enormous forces of friction of ocean waves on the bottom. In this case, the tidal wave is displaced from the point directly facing the Moon.

A lot of the life of our planet is connected with the Moon. A lot can be explained scientifically. However, to answer the curious question - who so accurately debugged the celestial mechanism, and placed all the cosmic bodies strictly in their places, at the moment no one is able to.

We are accustomed to the fact that the Moon is a satellite of the Earth. However, will it always be like this? According to the General Director of the Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering Gennady Raikunov, our night star may sooner or later leave the earth's orbit and become an independent planet. In this case, the Earth will turn into a lifeless desert ...

Raikunov assures that the Moon may well repeat the fate of Mercury, which, as is assumed, was once a satellite of Venus, but then “flew away” from it. After that, the conditions on Venus became unsuitable for life, despite the fact that it is a terrestrial planet.

“The moon also moves away from the Earth every year, and someday, apparently, if reverse processes do not happen, it must leave the Earth,” the director of TsNIIMash made such a statement at the ongoing air show in Bourges. along the path of Venus, when conditions are formed that are not suitable for existing life forms - an aggressive atmosphere, huge pressure, a greenhouse effect, etc.?

According to the scientist, space research is now being carried out to help find out whether the conditions of life on our planet will change if it loses its natural satellite, and how the worst case scenario can be prevented.

Gennady Raikunov has long been worried about the fate of the moon. Earlier, he called the satellite "the seventh continent" and stated that it is necessary to create a permanently functioning base on it, whose employees will be engaged in research and use of the resources of this celestial body.

Now the Moon is moving around the Earth in a nearly elliptical orbit, counterclockwise (when viewed from the North Pole) at an average speed of 1.02 kilometers per second. In fact, the movement of our natural satellite is a rather complex process, which is influenced by various perturbations due to the attraction of the Sun, planets and the oblate shape of the Earth. How likely is the scenario proposed by Raikunov?

Sergey Popov, a researcher at the Sternberg State Astronomical Institute of Moscow State University (GAISH), confirmed that the Moon is indeed moving away from the Earth, but very slowly - the removal rate is about 38 millimeters per year. "In a few billion years, the period of the Moon's revolution will simply grow by one and a half times, and that's all," Popov said. "The moon cannot completely leave. It has nowhere to get energy in order to escape."

According to Surdin, under the influence of solar tides (the movement of water masses caused by the attraction not of the Moon, but of the Sun. - Ed. ) the speed of rotation of our planet is gradually decreasing, and the speed of removal of the satellite will gradually decrease. In about five billion years, the radius of the lunar orbit will reach its maximum value - 463 thousand kilometers, and the duration of the earth's day will increase to 870 hours.

“The statement “The moon can leave the Earth’s orbit and turn into a planet” is incorrect,” Vladimir Surdin commented on the words of his colleague Raikunov. “Solar tides will continue to slow down the Earth. But now the Moon will outpace the Earth’s rotation, and tidal friction will begin to slow down its movement. As a result, the Moon will begin to approach the Earth, though very slowly, since the strength of the solar tides is small.

But, even if we imagine that the Moon is no longer a satellite of the Earth, this will not yet turn our planet into a kind of lifeless Venus, scientists say. Thus, Alexander Bazilevsky, head of the laboratory of comparative planetology at the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, commented: "The departure of the Moon will have little effect on the conditions on the Earth's surface. There will be no ebb and flow (they are mostly lunar), and the nights will be moonless. We will survive."

Raykunov's colleagues do not quite agree with his statement that Mercury was once a satellite of Venus. "Calculations have shown that this is possible, which, however, does not prove that it was so," Bazilevsky said. In addition, he believes, the development of the Earth and Venus cannot follow the same paths, since an increased content of the heavy isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, is observed in the Venusian atmosphere.

“This may be due to the fact that Venus once had a relatively large amount of water. When the water in the upper atmosphere decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen, the light hydrogen isotope escaped into space faster than the heavy one, and the observed anomaly was obtained,” the scientist says. it is not a fact that there was liquid water on the surface of Venus, and not steam in the atmosphere, that is, it is not a fact that it was not as hot there as it is now."