How tidal locking works and Why we see same side of moon always, This moon thing is confusing me very much, I watched many videos and made a understanding but i can’t picture it, too hard for my brain

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How tidal locking works and Why we see same side of moon always, This moon thing is confusing me very much, I watched many videos and made a understanding but i can’t picture it, too hard for my brain

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On Earth we have tides which move the ocean about and change the water level at beaches. This is caused by the Moon’s gravity as it orbits around the Earth tugging on the water and creating a bulge of ocean that moves around the world

The Earth also creates a bulge in the rocks that make up the Moon. The Moon used to rotate quicker but that resulted in a tidal bulge of rocks that moved along its surface. Rocks don’t flow well so this used up a good amount of energy and eventually sapped enough energy from the Moon’s rotation that the Moon now rotates at the same speed it orbits Earth meaning the bulge no longer moves along its surface

The tides on Earth also slow the Earth’s orbit to match the Moon’s 28 day orbit and tugs the Moon along speeding up its orbit trying to match the Earth’s 24 hour rotation, but the Earth is just so much more massive than the Moon that this process takes a lot longer and hasn’t happened yet(it won’t for billions of years either so don’t panic!)

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