• Question: witch is bigger the moon or the earth

    Asked by to Andrei, Ekbal, Gemma, Helen, Ruth on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ekbal Hussain

      Ekbal Hussain answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Hi Dinosaur2541!

      The Earth is much bigger than the moon, in fact it’s about 50 times bigger by size. In other words, the Earth is about 13,000 kilometres in diameter whereas the moon is only 3,500 kilometres.

      Actually, many scientists think that the moon was made by material from the earth that got exploded out by a giant collision with another planet! So the moon is like the Earth’s baby. That’s pretty cool huh?

      Ekbal

    • Photo: Helen Gath

      Helen Gath answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Quite right. Due to the Earth having a larger mass than the moon, it has a strong gravitational pull. This attractive pull – a bit like the attraction between a piece of metal and a magnet -and the speed at which the moon moves, is powerful enough to keep the moon circling around Earth at a constant distance.
      Here’s a cool video to help explain;
      http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ess05.sci.ess.eiu.moonorbit/why-doesnt-the-moon-fall-down/

      However,, the SIZE of the moon could be bigger or smaller and it would still remain in Earth’s orbit. It is the MASS of the moon and its DISTANCE from the Earth which is important. The Sun could be squashed to the size of a basketball, but if it’s mass (the amount of stuff it’s made off ) stayed the same, Earth would still stay in the Sun’s orbit.

      Hope that helps!

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