Re: Moon's synchronism

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> "tidal locking".  The "tidal" stretching of the moon by the earth's field
> gradient causes internal heating as the moon rotates, therefor its
> rotation must slow down as energy goes from KE to the internal heating
> (and the moon must also orbit faster/higher, if I understand correctly.)

It's slower/higher, actually. This sort of tidal interaction has
resulted in the tidal spin-orbit locking of most of the large
planetary satellites in the solar system. It is also responsible
for the volcanism on Io and the librating orbital resonance lock
of the inner three Jovian satellites. Close binary stars are
known to exhibit such spin-orbit tidal locks as well. Pluto and
Charon appear to be in a mutual spin-orbit tidal lock of the
sort I suggested Earth and Moon are approaching.

Sounds like Bill has been reading the right sort of SF, but that
is all introductory textbook stuff, and introductory textbooks
are easy to read nowadays. May I recommend those by Kaufmann (d.)
and Comins, "Discovering the Universe" and "Universe", and
"Astronomy Today" by Chaisson and Macmillan?

Leigh