Tidbit of the Week--Tidal Locking

I've been doing a lot of tidbits on the moon lately. I wonder if it's because I've been thinking about the moon a lot lately. I guess so.

I never knew why only one side of the moon faces the Earth. I had some weird idea that maybe it was part of the Earth and it broke away and is still rotating at the same speed it's orbiting, or some such half-baked idea. But that's silly.

I was reading in 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science, and I read about land tides on the moon. Apparently, after hundreds of thousands of years these land tides have despun the moon, so now it only shows us one side. The book didn't go into much detail as to how this works, so I decided to dig deeper.

According to Wikipedia, these despinning land tide forces are called "tidal locking." In short, "The change in rotation rate necessary to tidally lock a body B to a larger body A is caused by the torque applied by A's gravity on bulges it has induced on B by tidal forces." That's enough explanation for me.

Another Great Launch for Discovery

STS-128 is on its way, with no major anomalies to report!

Did you know?

NASA plans to retire the Shuttle program in 2010. More on that later.

Did You Know?

"During the cold war, the code to unlock nuclear missiles was 00000000. Strategic Air Command thought the eight-digit combinations necessary to launch ICBMs were for [dumbbells], the kind of fraidy-cats who engage the safety on their personal firearms. So the combination for all the missiles was kept at 00000000. The locks were finally given legitimate combinations in 1977."

– 100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know, p.173.