Isn't wind and hydro energy just secondary solar energy?

Why don't you go fly close to the sun.

Tom

 

well, at least the opposite won't happen. I'd rather the moon "unassed the AO" than come home to roost...

 

Geosynchronous orbit rises as the earth slows. When it rises up to the same altitude as the moon -- as it is then, farther out than now -- tidal lock will happen.

Do you have a reference claiming that the moon will escape? Here is one that says it won't [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_acceleration"]Here is one that says it won't[/ame]:

"If other effects were ignored, tidal acceleration would continue until the rotational period of the Earth matched the orbital period of the Moon. At that time, the Moon would always be overhead of a single fixed place on Earth. Such a situation already exists in the Pluto-Charon system. However, the slowdown of the Earth's rotation is not occurring fast enough for the rotation to lengthen to a month before other effects make this irrelevant: About 2.1 billion years from now, the continual increase of the Sun's radiation will cause the Earth's oceans to vaporize, removing the bulk of the tidal friction and acceleration. Even without this, the slowdown to a month-long day would still not have been completed by 4.5 billion years from now when the Sun will evolve into a red giant and possibly destroy both the Earth and Moon."

 

A few barley pops convinced me that perhaps the last thing we have to worry about is the moon crashing into the earth.

 

Orbital mechanics are complex when more than two bodies are involved. If there were only two bodies, the moon and the earth, the angular momentum in the earth is insufficient to eject the moon into solar orbit. In this case the moon and the earth will become tidally locked.

A third body makes this a wildcard problem. As the moon gets farther from the earth, it is more likely that a third body may perturb the lunar orbit and send it off around the sun. Most models of planetary orbits for our solar system show something like this happening. In fact most of them end up with the planets bouncing around like billiard balls after a break. Obviously it hasn't yet happened, which means either we have been lucky, or we don't fully understand what stabilizes the planetary orbits.

Ignoring other perturbing forces, we still have the sun. The sun exerts tidal effects on both the earth and the moon. These tidal effects will prevent the moon from staying tidally locked with the earth. If the moon reaches that point without being perturbed, solar tidal effects will continue to slow the earth's rotation. This will once again cause lunar tides to occur on the earth, except this time they will be retarding the moon. The moon will slow as the earth speeds up. The whole cycle will unwind until the moon is eventually broken up in low orbit by the earth's gravity.

As pointed out earlier, all of this takes too long. The sun will get both the earth and the moon before tidal locking can occur. I am betting something will perturb the moon's orbit before that, but there is no way for anyone to know. It's all a matter of speculation and science fiction.

Tom

 

Most of the news on this is four years old, with few recent updates. I can't reach a certain link at SciAm right now.

A NYT article said "This is a mathematical mapping, and these are not real black holes." See this link:

 

Oh, they aren't *that* bad. Assuming you have a lot of patience, several cases of booze including "emergency backup" booze, and a powerful supercomputer like the new IBM RoadRunner at Sandia

IBM Tapped For 20-Petaflop Government Supercomputer -- Supercomputers -- InformationWeek

The sinister mind that I am, I'd probably use the RoadRunner - complete with 2 MW power consumption - to post on PriusChat, while slurping down taxpayer-provided booze

 

When the new supercollider actually comes on-line we might get better data. I'd like to believe that they did create a micro-black hole, and that Hawking was right - it's intriguing that the numbers from the 2005 experiment seem to support his current theories. And hopefully he will make a full recovery and be around to argue the point further - what an incredible mind!

 

When I was in 6th grade growing up in a small town in Oklahoma in the '60's, NASA was touring the schools to promote science (and probably to stir up support for their budget). We all gathered in the auditorium and saw films and heard lectures from real Rocket Scientists. One thing they discussed was the difficulties in calculating the orbital dynamics of getting to the moon, pointing out that without "modern" computers it would have been impossible to calculate the trip manually. Being the precocious brat I was, I asked about sending probes to Jupiter and orbiting among all those moons. The scientists all agreed that it would be impractical if not "virtually impossible" to calculate the orbital dynamics involved.

From 1995 to 2003, not only did Galileo orbit Jupiter among its 4 moons, but it used gravitational assist from the moons many times to change orbit, passing as close as 162 miles from the surface of them. Such precision flying would not have been possible with the computing power of the 1960's - but today it's a standard mission tactic. Never underestimate the future!

 

Now you know why I am so concerned about global warming! Things are already getting a bit sticky!

Icarus

 

so . . . where'd the big bang come from? Wooah! don't wana go there, or the mod's will toss us into FHOP

Yeah, so . . . since we're saying that even oil comes from solar . . . I guess that means all of our polyvinyl chloride substances are secondary solar energy too ... now that we're as abstract as we can possibly get (i'm getting a pain behind my right eye, just thinking about all this )

 

<sits on his hands>

Don't make me answer that.....

:focus:

 

God had beans for dinner.

Tom

 

Big Bang .... nope, better not say it

 

Now there is a thought, and it pretty much explains string theory: all of the galaxies (but not our PC galaxie) are swimming upstream as fast as their little flagella can move them.

Tom