Well sort of, I noticed something. If you take into account the effects of the universe expanding you notice it accounts for a good portion of how much it drifts away. What I did: took the estimated value of expansion 73.8 plus/minus 2.4 km/s/Mpc and applied it to the distance between the surface of earth and the surface of the moon. The space between these two points would be expanding at 2.74 to 2.93 cm per year. The lunar laser ranging experiments have noted 3.8 cm of drift per year. If you subtract out the distance due to expansion it comes in the realm of 0.96 cm. Sources on the web say it is all because of tidal friction. I agree it may be part of it, but factoring in this extra variable it appears tidal forces only account for roughly 25% of the recessional distance. Looking at how they went about calculating the "3.8 cm per year" they did not take this into account. Wanting to get feedback mainly.
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I agree, expansion of the universe does increase any distance of 240,000 miles by about 2.9 cm in a year.
In addition to making the Moon orbit out farther, the tidal friction is slowing Earth's rotation. So the question is if the amount of energy gained by the Moon to send it higher is equal to the amount lost by the Earth slowing it's rotation.
In addition to making the Moon orbit out farther, the tidal friction is slowing Earth's rotation. So the question is if the amount of energy gained by the Moon to send it higher is equal to the amount lost by the Earth slowing it's rotation.
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Yeah.