6/27/2023 0 Comments Tidal lockingWhat’s even more fascinating is that the respective planet of a moon will eventually tidally lock too the moon as well. Eventually over many millions of years the moon of a planet will tidally lock. In the earlier stages the use of gravitational torque will create a large amount of energy dissipation in the form of internal tidal heating that is created due to the squishing and squashing of the moon’s non ideal rotation on the axis. Torque from the gravitational forces will try to maintain an equilibrium state for the moon that over time will be the tidally locked position for the moon. In order to combat this distortion a moon has to adapt to the gravitational forces otherwise it will swing in a pendulum motion (which is theoretically what happens in the beginning stages). Moving onto the explanation, the reason for tidal locking is due to the gravity on a moon not being uniform throughout it’s entire body, meaning the side facing Earth, Jupiter, Saturn etcetera will have a larger gravitational force per unit mass over the opposite side.Īs a result the weaker side will lag behind and distort the moon into an elliptical shape. It only became as such over countless years and after physics had played its part in the equation.Īccording to many physicists it took roughly 100 million years for the moon to be tidally locked to Earth, which is also roughly the amount of time it took for the moons of the other planets within our solar system to achieve the same feat. The whole process is a little complicated to explain but, I’ll try to do so in a manner that is somewhat easy to understand.įirst of all it’s worth noting that moons and particularly our moon weren’t always tidally locked to Earth. When a moon is within the gravitational pull of a planet the gravity of the planet forces a moon to orbit it, which results in a moon tidally locking to their respective planet (eventually). Moons are tidally locked to their respective planets due to the gravitational pull a planet has on them when they’re in the said planet’s region of orbit. (you can read about it by clicking here though) Why Are Moons Tidally Locked To Their Respective Planets? Sometime planets like Mercury can be confused as being tidally locked to the sun for example but, that’s a slightly different subject. ![]() The same can be said for a large number of other moons that orbit their respective major planets too. In fact the moon spins around it’s axis once every full orbit it makes around our Earth, which roughly equates to 7 days for both.Īs a result we only see one side of the moon even though it continues to spin on its axis. You may assume that the Moon is stationary however, this isn’t the case. This is the reason why we only see specific side of the moon which has been the case since we first saw the entity. If you’re unfamiliar with what tidal locking is, it’s when a body orbits around another object where its day and year length are equal to it’s orbit around said body, which results in that object only facing the other object in one locked position.
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