What would happen to the moon if Earth stopped exerting the force of gravity on it?
Physics · Middle School · Mon Jan 18 2021
Answered on
If Earth suddenly stopped exerting the force of gravity on the moon, the moon would no longer feel the pull that keeps it in orbit around our planet. The moon would move on a path that is a straight line tangent to its orbit at the point where gravity ceased to affect it. This is due to Newton's first law of motion, which states that an object will remain at rest or continue to move at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. Since the gravitational force keeps the moon in a curved orbit, without this force, the moon's path would straighten out, and it would travel off into space in the straight-line direction it was moving at the time the force stopped.