From that website:
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If you were to have an imaginary hollow sphere made out of a very thick and massive material, and you were stuck inside, where do you think you would come to rest? Would you fall to the center? Would you fall to the edge? As it turns out, the mass of the side to which you are closest has a pull identical to the far end of the sphere's mass. As it is farther away, its gravitational forces are lessened in perfect synchronicity. This is another of the many miracles of pi.
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Another miracle of pi?
From its
tides page:
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[The Sun's] effects contribute to only 10% of earth's tides.
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It's actually about three times that.
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To start you have the inner and outer cores. These rotate within the earth at a speed approximately 550 miles per hour faster than the earth itself rotates.
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Many magnitudes less than that.
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The gravitational pull between earth and our moon actually creates a point of equilibrium, called a barrycenter. At this point no gravity is felt. I'll explain this more in another post, but the earth is 12,756 kilometers in diameter, and our barrycenter is revolving at only 1,100 kilometers below the earth's surface. This creates a literal vacuum at the point between the earth and the moon, and our atmosphere and oceans are the only matter which can significantly fill the void, which creates the bulge.
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The only tide page I've seen with as bad an explanation was NOAA's.
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As the bulge preceeds the moon due to rotation, and it is being pulled backwards, does this slow the rotation of the earth? Yep. We lose 0.002 seconds every day due to this.
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Not every day. Every century.
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The same effect will one day have the earth's most massive side always facing that side of the moon.
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The moon's "most massive side" does not face the Earth directly.