----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen A. Lawrence" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, December 23, 2005 9:53 PM Subject: Re: Global Warming
> > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Vortexians- The evening news on ABC ststed that the clock watchers > > are going to add a leap second to the last second of > > Dec.31,2005 to correct the clocks to the earths rotation. > > It seems that they have had to add 23 seconds since > > 1972 to correct clocks. The Earth has been slowing down > > its rotation speed. > > The slowing of the earth should increase its > > temperature I would think (Im possibly wrong.) > > It does seem to coinside with the years of biggest > > increase of temperature. Or as many suspect just a normal > > cycle. > > A cycle we are not aware of. > > _ges- > > My understanding is that the slowing of the Earth is due to tidal forces > exerted on the Earth by the Moon. > > In simple Newtonian terms, the tital bulge of the ocean isn't directly > under the moon -- it's "dragged" by the rotation of the earth to a > position a number of degrees off from where you'd expect (high tide > isn't when the Moon is at the zenith, as you might have expected). In > consequence, the shape of the earth "seen" by the Moon's gravitational > field isn't a sphere, and the Moon's gravity actually exerts a torque on > the Earth. In turn, the Earth exerts an off-center force on the Moon, > which is consequently gradually being "spun up" in its orbit. The > Moon's orbit gets bigger, and the Earth slows down simultaneously. > > Another way to look at it is that the oceans are dragged around the > Earth by the tides in the opposite directly from its rotation, and > friction between the oceans and their beds is gradually slowing down the > Earth. It's a little harder to see how energy and angular momentum are > conserved when viewing it this way, tho. > > Either way, this has been going on at roughly the same rate for as long > as there have been liquid oceans on the Earth. So, while it's no doubt > contributing some amount of heat to the Earth, it's not a new effect; > the current unusual warming of the Earth surely is unrelated to it. As the earth slows down, the daily temerature extremes will get greater since there will be more time at night for the temp to go low and more time in the day for it to go high. It is interesting to extrapolate back in time, the tidal effects on the earth's rotational speed, and the size of the moon's orbit. As you calculate backward, one million, two million, three million years, the earth is spinning faster and faster, bulging noticebly at the equator (oblate spheroid). The moon is significantly closer, raising the tidal drag to levels much higher than they are now. At some point in the past you reach the viability limit of the earth/moon planetary sub system where the earth is ready to fly apart due to centrifugal forces and the moon's close proximity is causing additional devastation resulting in a tremendous energy transfer rate between the two bodies. I havn't seen these calculations worked out in any detail, but I think this phenomena imposes an age limit of this system that is much younger than some evolutionary scientists would like it to be. Here is another peculiar thing that is hard to explain. If the earth has such high tidal drag because of all the liquid sloshing around and the moon has practically no tidal drag because of its solid structural stiffness, why is the moon phase locked to the earth rather than the other way around? Are the mass differences really enough to account for that? Has anyone come across either the calculations or results done by a reputable astrophysicist? Jeff
