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Originally Posted by zeroca Who can answer the question?
As we know only one side of the Moon is always visible, but the second – so called “Dark side of the Moon” is never seen from the Earth!
Is it really so?
And why it happens? |
You can verify this for yourself by going out and looking at the moon at different observation times, and looking at the features on the moon- they will be the same.
This is because the moon is tidally locked to the earth- the moons rotational inertia has been lost due to tidal effects of the earth. Just as now, the moon causes tides on earth and this causes a slowing of the earths spin. In fact, on Dec 31 2005 at 7:00 eastern time they added a single second because the earth is slowing down due to tidal forces caused by the moon.
The moons rotation has been slowly conforming to the earth so that its "tidal waves" are stuck in one place and no longer disspiate energy. Presumably, although I am guessing here, the moon is slightly eccentric in its mass distribution and now a heavy part of the moon is facing us or on the opposite side.. looking at a reference here I see it actually points away from earth, not towards earth.
In fact, every "moon" of our solar system is tidally locked to the planet it circles, with the exception of one moon (extra credit - which moon)
Here is a reference for you:
http://www.digipro.com/Trials/moon.html