Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Trending News
25 Answers
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
There are two other objects that some scientists have referred to as Earth's other moons, but they aren't really moons.The first is called 3753 Cruithne, and it's not a moon at all, but an asteroid that orbits the Sun. Since its orbit takes the same amount of time to orbit the Sun as the Earth, it sometimes looks like it's following Earth in orbit around the Sun. Although Cruithne's path comes very close to Earth, the two objects can never really collide because Cruithne's orbit is tilted to that of the Earth's by 19.8°. It's a very interesting object, and has an orbit that interacts with Earth, Cruithne really doesn't quality as a satellite of Earth.
Have you been keeping count? How many moons does Earth have? Still just 1.
The other object is called 2002 AA29, and it takes an even more bizarre orbit around the Sun. It spends most of its time in a horseshoe orbit, oscillating up and down near the Earth. Every 95 years or so, 2002 AA29 comes within 5.9 million km of Earth. Because it's so close to Earth, scientists have suggested that it might make an ideal target for a space mission to retrieve a sample and bring it back to Earth.Astronomers thought they might have discovered another moon in 2002, which they designated J002E3. But it turned out to be the third stage of the Apollo 12 Saturn V rocket.
- 1 decade ago
It used to, but for probably less than a day. When the moon was formed, it was by a huge planet sized thing hitting into the Earth billions of years ago, and some of the Earth was thrown into space. This chunk of rock formed into thin rings for a while, which then clumped together into several small moons, which then clumped together into the Moon as we know it. So yes, it did have moons for a short time, and it even had rings. But not for very long at all.
- John RLv 51 decade ago
The earth has only one moon, this moon was formed after a planet about the size of Mars collided with the earth.
But today the earth has it's norman moon and thousands of man made moons, known as Satellites.
Source(s): Gloom & Doom - Anonymous1 decade ago
When the planetesimal smashed into the Earth around 4 billion years ago, the debris formed a ring that would have been thousands of "moons" in orbit around the Earth.
That debris coalesced into a single object that we call the Moon.
- How do you think about the answers? You can sign in to vote the answer.
- DavidLv 61 decade ago
Well there was speculation in the 19th century that sparked off from a claim made by a german scientist that Earth had two more moons. However this claim wasn't backed up by other scientists so until any evidedence comes to light then we can only assume there is one.
- 1 decade ago
Well that's a good question. We know Earth to have 1 moon. It may be possible that a long time ago another moon formed.. but we can't be sure
- ?Lv 41 decade ago
To our knowledge no.
However there is a possibility since our current moon is going farther away from earth every year.
Thus, probably another moon could have existed but flown away. (A POSSIBILITY, but ridiculous)).
- digquicklyLv 71 decade ago
Well, ..., Actually, Earth does have more than one moon. There is a Trojan asteroid (3753 Cruithne) orbiting (albeit in a strange manner) around Earth's LaGrange points. Ok, so technically it's not a second moon but it is another body that has become a companion to the Earth.
- GeorgeLv 71 decade ago
It is possible many years ago, although we have no proof there were two or more Moon. The Moon you see now is approximately the same age as Earth (4.5 billion years old)
- 1 decade ago
yes! we had two moons before but then something happened that the other one become a shadow, it's invisible now, so whatever we see now is our only moon.