this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
1464 points (98.6% liked)

Programmer Humor

19555 readers
342 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

It's well understood math, but it's "only" relativistic orbital mechanics.

It boils down to a pretty consistent number, but how you get there is related to the weight of the moon, how far it is from earth, and how fast it's going.
Since the moon is going different speeds at different places in it's orbit, the number actually changes slightly over the month.

They're just using the average though, since it makes life far easier. We use the average for earth too, since clocks move differently at different altitudes or distances from the equator.