“Due to tidal forces”
Because, the moon (and maybe the sun, and other planets like Jupiter) are acting on it, yeah?
The earth won’t stop spinning. What’s happening is that the moon’s gravity is slowing the earth’s spin as it drags our oceans towards it.
Once our day is the same as the moon’s orbital period, then the tide will essentially be fixed, which means it’s no longer slowing us down.
And all that energy, for the record, is going into the moon and expanding its orbit slightly.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes, although quantum effects also slow spinning celestial objects/systems, even in the absence of measurable tidal effects. That would take much, much longer to slow down.
lucullus@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
What quantum effects exactly? How does that work?
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
For example
I’m not a scientist so I don’t claim to understand it or explain it.
lucullus@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Ah, thanks. Thats explains it quite good. Basically everywhere in space we have at least some energy. And where we have enery particles will pop into existance and be destroyed again (photons mostly I guess for low energy like with the background radiation in space). These particles only live a short amount of time, but they can still collide with objects like dust or even planets. And when these objects move, the particles in the front will basically collide harder/more, than in the back. Thus a small force against the moving direction is exerted on the object, proportional to its speed (just like friction). Though this is only significant for small objects like dust or on a very very very long time scale.