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why does the moon not rotate?

9 Answers

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  • ?
    Lv 5
    8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    The moon does rotate. You would see both sides of it if it didn't.

    The thing is, the moon is really close to the Earth. When a body orbits very closely to another body, something weird happens, called "tidal-locking". Basically, a tidally-locked object rotates in such a way that one rotation takes the exact length of its orbit to complete. This means the same side always faces inward.

    Mercury is thought to have once been the same way; its day/night cycle is probably the result of a collision with a large planetoid.

  • Anonymous
    8 years ago

    Of course the moon rotates, who told you it doesn't?

    It rotates once on its axis in the same time it takes to orbit the Earth once.

    Its called "tidal locking" and is a common situation for many moons in close orbits around their planets.

  • 8 years ago

    when the moon formed it was probably rotating faster than it is now. tidal forces (the same ones that create ocean tides on earth) act to slow down the rotation. eventually earth will be tidally locked to the moon as well, but the earth has more momentum than the moon so it takes a bit longer.

  • Anonymous
    8 years ago

    The moon does rotate it just rotates in such a way that one Side is always facing the earth

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  • 8 years ago

    Search Tidal locking

  • Anonymous
    8 years ago

    It does but it's tidally locked to earth which means that it rotates as fast as it orbits, so only one side is visible. from earth

  • Karri
    Lv 5
    8 years ago

    It's tidally locked, which means that one rotation takes one orbit.

  • 8 years ago

    it does, but it does so in such a way that the same side is always facing earth, think about it, if it didn't rotate then you wouldn't see the same side every time you looked at it

    Source(s): love space
  • Anonymous
    8 years ago

    The moon does turn on the Axis. But it is very slow, it takes approximatley 1 month to turn.

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