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The Moon's Orbit is WEIRD

minutephysics · 1.9M views · 2024-10-02 · 5:30

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Overview

A minutephysics explainer showing that the Moon's path around the Sun is not a spiral but closer to a 12-sided polygon with curved corners. It argues the Moon arguably orbits the Sun rather than the Earth.

On Hacker News

HN links it whenever the Moon's orbit comes up, as a concise explanation of why the Moon always curves toward the Sun.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2024–2026

Topics

Cosmology & astrophysicsSpace exploration & spaceflightEveryday physics & science demos
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orbital mechanicsmoonearthsolar systemgravity

What people said

lgcmo · 2026-06 · Recommendation

Very cool! Just one note about the moon orbit around the Earth, it is far more subtle; almost just orbiting the Sun alongside Earth. I can't explain better than minute physics, highly recommend: [VIDEO]

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nandomrumber · 2026-04 · Recommendation

This video explains what you’re talking about re the moons orbit always curving toward the sun, and also mentions Earths gravitational dominance. It’s about the suns gravitational pull on the moon dominating over the Earths gravitational pull on the moon, but that due to the centrifugal force (there isn’t one, so conservation of angular momentum) the Earth's gravitational pull dominates. [VIDEO]

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d1sxeyes · 2025-01 · Recommendation

It’s arguable that even the stuff we consider to orbit the earth like the moon is really orbiting the sun. MinutePhysics did a great video on this: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by minutephysics, played through YouTube.

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