On 26/08/2009, at 11:41 PM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
Charlie Bell wrote:
IIRC, Phobos is falling and Deimos is leaving Mars.
...and our moon is leaving too.
No, it's not. If the Sun didn't explode [*], the Earth-Moon
system would stabilize in two tidal-locked bodies.
Would it? The moon is drifting away at 3cm/year or so. At what
distance will the moon be when terra is tidally locked to the moon? Is
that distance close enough that interactions with other bodies won't
eventually pull it away?
[*] is this the correct verbal tense? I want to express an
alternate hypothetical future to a deterministic and almost sure
future.
Well, the Sun isn't going to "explode". It'll expand into a red giant,
and then slough its outer layers leaving a white dwarf remnant.
C.
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