Quote:
Originally Posted by Pazuzu
I'm a physicist, and as much as I hate to say it...you're wrong. Sorry.
The term "tidal" and "tide" come from gravitational tidal forces. Any gravitational source puts several different stresses on any other object...it doesn't just pull it.
One of the forces is a squeezing in the transverse direction. Another is a lengthening in the radial direction. These two force together cause the ocean to form an oval (more properly, and ellipse) around the Earth (which is also being squeezed and lengthened into an ellipse, but on a MUCH smaller scale).
The math behind it is pretty complex, but the result is well understood. It's not because of an ancient stable tidal wave traveling around the planet.
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What does he say that is wrong? All that he is saying is that the tides are a result of forces that started long ago it seems to me. This is correct. He simply does not understand the more basic underpinnings of what those forces are.
I dont think that the Mathematics are THAT complex. Just do a MacLaurin expansion about the center of mass of the earth/moon system. The first term is the traditional gravitational force. The rest of the terms are the tidal terms, with the highest order term being the one that we are more familiar with.