According to the thread 1722283, increasing the Earth's mass would only change the "barycenter" around which the Earth orbits slightly. I tried using Newton's equations for gravitational force and centripetal force, and found that the mass of the Earth cancels out (under the crude assumption...
According to an article I read,
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/tides.html
the Earth will one day become tidally locked to the moon the way the moon is locked to the Earth today, so that the same face of the Earth always faces the moon.
If this is true, how long will that process take?
Thank you.
I can't seem to find anything one way or another about mass in relation to orbit from the link you provided. I just want to make sure, you're saying that if, say, an asteroid knocked away the moon (thereby reducing the mass of the earth-moon system) there wouldn't be any change in...
Now that's a prime example of "chickity-check yourself before you wrickity-wreck yourself." Thanks for the warm welcome, I look forward to improving my phys-fu.
I only speak in relative terms of the "reasonable" attributes of Mars. It's not like we have a hard day/night split like on the moon...
Firstly, what happens to Earth's orbit around the sun should it gain or lose mass?
I would instinctively guess that a less massive Earth would have less gravitational attraction to the sun, therefore widening the orbit. However, I understand that orbital mechanics can run counter-intuitively...
I agree, the timescales here are not centuries, but millenia. That's why we have to start the process soon, so that capacity keeps up with the projected growth of our civilization.
Because of this, I believe that Venus is a poor candidate for terraforming, as it will eventually be subject to...