How many moons does the Earth have? (seriously)
 

Like it says: How many permanent NATURAL moons (not rocks) does the Earth have? (seriously!) I won't put the answer right away since people are going to read it and post differently first... But, I am willing to bet most people don't know the real answer... ;) (don't cheat and look up the answer first)

seriously?

http://www.awwboard.com/images/smiles/roflmao.gif

i voted 0 :Graucho

1 moon - The Moon. Was I right?

Yes, seriously. Write your vote here, so we can see it, and we'll see if you're still laughing at the end of this thread. :)

I would be interested in what you think that big white round thing that keeps moving through the sky is?

We talking here about perm. moons or perm. and temp. moons?

I think the definition of a moon is that it is permanent. Well, at least for 100,000,000 years. I think there's a moon around Jupiter in a retrogade motion which is against the tidal forces of the parent planet, so it is being pulled into the planet (the orbit is getting smaller). Eventually, it will reach the roche limit, and break apart from tidal forces, and form another ring. So, it's not really permanent, but you know... 100,000,000 years is good enough to be considered permanent.

I hope this clears things up.

Roche limit (rsh)
n.
The smallest distance at which a natural satellite can orbit a celestial body without being torn apart by the larger body's gravitational force. The distance depends on the densities of the two bodies and the orbit of the satellite.

Yes permanent moons. My vote is in, but I'm not telling you which it is just yet...

Zero. That satellite we call "The Moon" has only been around for a couple of billion years (not as long as the Earth) and was either a wandering asteroid/comet or is a large fragment of the earth that came about as the result of a comet/asteroid hitting the earth. In approx 1986 astronomers discovered another "natural" satellite but that turned out to be a wandering asteroid that got picked up by the Earths gravitational field, and the one they found a few months ago is likely to be an old rocket booster :thumbsup

Either that or the aliens put them there, just like the implant in my nose.

Dude, dont give away all the info, yet. :BangBang:
:)
oh, and if you dont consider the Moon a permanent moon, then you would have to consider that no moons in the solar system are permanent. In fact, the planets aren't permanent, either, so they aren't planets. And the sun won't be around in 10 billion years, so it's not a star, etc. Am I right?

So my comment wasn't that far off then.

When you post a question like that you'll need to understand that some of us will take it to the enth degree and some of us won't.

For that reason alone a question of this magnitude will never receive the full attention it deserves because quite frankly, we are not your local nerd club on summer break just awaiting a question to challenge and stimulate our aptitude.

Time to read another one of your brothers study guides or are you ready to discuss the reasons why 1 + 1 doesn't always equals 2 :1orglaugh

I seems to remember a post from Nina saying that she likes nerds.

If that is the case, then I am a nerd and proud of it :winkwink:

I think there is a alien base in the moon so it s not a real moon so there is 0 moon :):winkwink: :winkwink:

Huh? I asked how many natural moons the earth has.

For all the 'nerds' (nothing wrong with being one) who read into this further: Moon is defined. Earth is defined. Natural Moon is defined. Obviously, I am speaking about the present, not 1,000,000,000 years ago, so even the time frame is defined sufficiently. There is nothing more I needed to define.

Who's Nina?

yeah, saw the article somewhere the other day about the Saturn V rocket booster that scientists had thought was a new satellite.. Is that what Newton here is talking about?

Thrawn's right about the alien base. This is why noone's been up there for a while now, they were warned off back in '69 and finally got the message.. Here ya go:

UFO's Confirmed

All true.

defintion:
Moon: A natural satellite revolving around a planet.

Close, but no cigar. :)

This thread is GAY but I voted anyways.

I bet this gay thread dies soon if you don't give your "answer".

Earth has one moon.

I guess there are all kind of theories:
THE moon is actually slowly moving away from the Earth - eventually this could cause it to break free from Earth's gravity -> we have 0 permanent moons
On the other hand -> thousands of satellites do orbit earth. Are they permanent? yes, some are as permanent as the moon. Are they as big? No. But define big ENOUGH.

Nothing in motion is permanent.

Anything in orbit, is not permanent.

Intertia and gravity will always be stronger than dirt.

The first is still a moon, doesn't matter if it is slowly moving away.

The second (satellites) are not moons if they are man made and/or too small. Not sure how big it has to be to be a moon, but it's probably something like a few miles in diameter.

I voted 2 because I think I heard not a while ago they discovered another tiny moon.

But

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS UNNATURAL...

So there are thousands of moons...

I voted one, there is "the moon", and there is an asteroid that we picked up that is orbiting us. There is no guarentee that it will continue to orbit us forever, so it is not a perminant moon. It may stay there for 1000 years, 5000 years, or forever. There are no guarentees.
ZoiNk

I think this thread has to be one of the more interesting ones. I am going to play safe and go with the answer that 99% of the population would give that there is one moon.

I presume that this is the wrong answer hence why this thread has been created.

Earth has 6 billion and 1 moons

Sophomore year in high school, Algebra 2, our hot shot student teacher proved exactly that to us. Don't remember how. Didn't care then, don't care now.

Seriously? None. It's a conspiracy.

The moon is slowing moving away, but slowing down. It will eventually stop. This is because the moon is slowing the rotation of the earth from tidal forces, as the earth successfully occomplished on the moon. It has a tidal lock on the moon - the forces of gravity on the near side are greater than the forces of gravity on the far side. The process of this lost energy of rotation is translated into distance of angular momentum. When the rotation slows and stops, so will the increased radius of the moon's orbit. The only way we'd lose the moon is if it moved far enough away that another planet grabbed it away... it can never escape earth's gravity any other way. Even if there was an explosion on the moon, like in some movies, we wouldnt lose the moon unless it accelerated at escape velocity (11 km/sec), or unless it got far enough away that another planet's gravity was stronger than earth's and took it away.

Besides, it wasnt meant as a trick question - the moon is there, it's real, it's at least 1 moon, so i shouldnt have put the option of '0 moons' - my apologies. it must have made people think it wasnt serious, so that was dumb.

Definition:
moon (mn)
n.
A natural satellite revolving around a planet.

Define satellite then

(n.
Astronomy. A celestial body that orbits a planet; a moon. ?)

Common sense says to me that a satellite has to be large enough to be considered a moon

I knew I shouldnt have added the word permanent. Someone asked that, so I changed the post to say permenant. :(

All I meant was a current, naturally occuring satellite. That's the definition of a moon.

An unnatural moon is a man-made satellite.

Again, I shouldn't have said permanent. Some people think it means over 5,000 years, some people think it means over 1 billion, and some even more than that.

But, the second asteriod you mention is the earth's second moon, called Cruithne:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Cruit...=Google+Search

Thank you... I only started it because I knew it would be interesting, and that 99% of the people were unaware of Earth's second moon:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Cruithne

(i was TRYING to get the URL straight to the page, but it wont post properly... why?? the board is changing the url to blahblahblahblah)

There is another satellite orbitting earth right now that they just found, but think it's just a piece of space junk. If confirmed that it's not (unlikely), then it will be the 3rd moon.

This also reminds me of a thing I heard awhile ago about a planet far, far behind Pluto. Then it turned out to be something else caught in the gravational field of the sun. Space is crazy like that.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it orbiting the SUN just like earth does. I mean it's an asteroid which is using the same orbit than Earth. It's not orbiting Earth

I just don't wana see anything brown comming at me from the moon

Not true.