Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
The earth is a satellite around the sun, and it's not a perfect sphere either.
So ... I'm thinking the earth should have a hemisphere facing the sun -- global warming -- and a hemisphere facing away from the sun -- ice age.
Tidal Locking in action!
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Your actually right on this one! Both the moon and the sun both exert Tidal Locking on the earth, but as you can imagine, the moon is not nearly at doing it to the extent as we are to the moon. The sun also exerts a similar force but because of the massive distance between us and the sun, the difference between the far edge of our planet and the close edge is not significant to have a noticeable affect, but it is measurable. Its essential to understand that these sorts of forces happen over astronomical periods of time. For this very reason earths day becomes longer by 15 microseconds every year, but at this rate the Sun becomes a red giant and engulfs the planet before we ever reach that sort of synchronous orbit.