" The facts that so impressed Newton-that the planets all orbit in roughly the same plane (the ecliptic) and in the same direction-reflect their role as repositories of angular momentum, spun off as the original gas cloud condensed. Other features reflect the long influence of history, wearing down the rough edges, so to speak. The fact that the same side of our Moon always faces Earth is one such feature: rotation of the Moon would raise powerful tides, which act as friction. Presumably, in the distant past, there was such a rotation, but it has been damped out. (For similar reasons, the length of Earth days is increasing. Geological records, which show daily fluctuations in tidal deposits, indicate that during the Cambrian era, 650 million years ago, days were roughly twenty-one hours long.) "

― Frank Wilczek , A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design