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Old 16-October-2003, 06:07 AM
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kilopi kilopi is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Eroica
The reference was in the Recommended Reading section on page 261.
Thanks! I found it in my copy. I must have read it before, but was confused with his BABB posts--I didn't remember seeing it before.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eroica
I thought this amounted to what JohnD was saying in his "different orbit" theory. If not, I obviously misinterpreted it. Sorry again.
I thought that the BA's version agreed with Sawicki's--and that JohnD's didn't. JohnD?
Quote:
I don't follow. At the moment that the point in question is closest to the Sun, it is travelling on an orbit about the Earth-Sun barycentre whose radius is less than that of the Earth's CoM by the radius of the Earth - not offset by the radius of the Earth.

Incidentally, why wait six months for it to be the farthest point? Isn't twelve hours just as good?
We have to be careful here--the effect of the rotation of the Earth has nothing to do with the tides, so you have to do the analysis without regard to that rotation.
Quote:
It might be easier if we considered a situation in which the Earth is imagined to be travelling on a circular orbit and to be in a locked rotation, so that the point in question will always be closest to the Sun, and will surely be "orbiting" the Earth-Sun barycentre in a circular path, but at a speed that is too slow for free-fall.
Of course, that means that the Earth rotates once per every revolution--and the effects you are describing are a result of that rotation, not the tide.
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