You asked about earth-moon. That is what I was answering.
Stop and think about the equations.
distance earth to moon = about 240,000 miles.
distance earth or moon to sun = 93,000,000 miles.
when you go back to the equations you will find
somevalue 93,000,000
2
and
somevalue 240,000
2
That is a big difference. Regardless of the somevalue, the attraction between the earth and moon will be greater than between either and the sun.
The second part involves the 'somevalue'.
That will be dependant on the two variable, the M (mass of first) and m (mass of second).
When the two masses are relatively the same (as is true with the earth -moon system), the individual masses become significant. But look at the relative masses of the earth or moon vs the sun.
The sun is about 333,000 times the mass of the earth and so it doesn't much matter wether we are talking about the mass of the earth or of the moon, the answer will be dominated by the Mass of the sun and the distance between the two objects. The sun is BIG and far away.
Edited by jar, : 0
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