As much as it has marveled and helped us throughout history, the position of the Moon is not by chance: our satellite has been moving away from the Earth since its formation and will continue to do so at a rate of about 3 annual centimeters.
At present, the Moon circles the Earth at an average of 370,000 kilometers. But at the time of its formation, after a body the size of Mars collided with the early Earth and the remaining orbiting debris coalesced to form our satellite, the Moon was only 19,000 to 30,000 kilometers away . If we had been alive at that time, 4.5 billion years ago, we would have seen a Moon 20 times larger in the sky that would have completely covered the Sun during an eclipse, of course. In other words, that of perfect eclipses, nothing at all. In reality, they are a relatively recent coincidence.
And the same will happen in the future: as the Moon moves away from the Earth, it will cover less of the solar disk during eclipses. Luckily, the Moon will never leave Earth’s orbit because in about 50 billion years its orbit will stabilize and end up in an orbit in which it will take 47 days to complete one revolution around our planet, instead of 27 days. current.
When that time comes, the Moon will be 970,000 kilometers from Earth and will have a size in the sky 2.5 times smaller than its current size … Something that will not matter much, actually, since at that time it will make tens of thousands millions of years that the Sun will have swallowed the Earth-Moon system after becoming a red giant.
