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View Full Version : Some questions about the tidal dissipation function


Deadstar
May15-11, 02:17 PM
I'm sure you all know what I mean by tidal dissipation function but it's...

Q = \frac{2 \pi E_0}{\Delta E}

and describes how much dissipation is produced. \Delta E is the energy lost over one cycle and E_0 is the peak energy stored during the cycle.

So my questions are:

How do we estimate this? I remember my lecturer saying a while ago it's not very well known for most planets. Following on from this, I read it can be used to explain the lack of resonance in Uranus's satellites but I can't get any access to the only article I could find on this. (google search only brings up further links to it's abstract)

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987pggp.rept...26P

So why are there no resonances? It clearly has to do with tidal evolution but my understanding of it is not good enough to explain something like this.