Okay, I thought about that some more, and here’s what I come up with:
The Moon is 1/6 the mass of Earth, and therefore it’s gravity pull is 1/6 the pull of Earth.
We are at the bottom of Earth’s ‘Gravity Well’. The Moon is in the Earth’s Gravity Well also, but not at the bottom, 240k+/- miles out.
All these asteroids, meteors and comets were falling, not toward the Moon, but toward the Earth, and the Moon just got in the way.
These objects travel extremely fast, 11 km/sec to 72 km/sec (25,000 mph to 160,000 mph) [had to look that up!].
Unlike the Earth, the Moon has no appreciable atmosphere, mostly vacuum, dust and some small amount of hydrogen.
So, when a meteor is hurtling towards the Earth at fantastic speeds, suddenly it hits the Moon instead and has no atmosphere to deflect it, so it crashes at full speed. The Moon’s gravity is feeble compared to the Earth, so it’s gravity doesn’t much affect the angle at which the meteor is traveling towards Earth. Nor does it have time to do so, since the speed of the object is so enormous.
Just looking at the backside of the Moon, you can see that the Moon is our Guardian, and saved us from destruction many, many times over the eons. Just a few have gotten past the Moon-gate, and they were whoppers.
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Thank you. I think that’s a good answer. But then, I still wrestle with why the Moon always has the same side towards us.
I’ve read the explanation, accept it, but I have trouble reasoning it out in 3-D geometrical logic, for some reason.
I never did well on those H.S. tests where they showed you a complex 3-D object and then asked which one of four other objects represented it when turned upside down and backwards....