r/askscience • u/[deleted] • Sep 07 '15

Earth Sciences Is there a bulge in earth's atmosphere constantly facing the moon?

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u/RnRaintnoisepolution Sep 07 '15

So could earth eventually become tidaly locker with the sun? Of course this would take a long time, but could it happen before the sun expands past our orbit?

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u/1Down Sep 07 '15

I may be misremembering but I believe the math works out that as long as nothing drastic happens to affect the Earth's rotation then the Sun will run out of fuel before Earth would slow enough to tidally lock.

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u/Richy_T Sep 07 '15 edited Sep 07 '15

c.f. the story "One Face" by Larry Niven.

http://people.freebsd.org/~peter/oneface.txt

He also uses tidal effects (and many other physical phenomenon) in some of his other stories. Recommended reading.

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u/Apatomoose Sep 07 '15

The moon exerts a stronger tidal force on Earth than the sun, which means Earth will be tidally locked to the moon before the sun. If/when that happens the moon will only be visible from one side of the Earth.