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They do actually. I learned in a marine navigation class that the tides are on a cycle of 18.6 years. If only the moon affected the tides, the cycle would be
by jlj 7y ago
They do actually. I learned in a marine navigation class that the tides are on a cycle of 18.6 years. If only the moon affected the tides, the cycle would be about 28 days.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide
> Nineteen years is preferred because the Earth, Moon and Sun's relative positions repeat almost exactly in the Metonic cycle of 19 years, which is long enough to include the 18.613 year lunar nodal tidal constituent.
- Miraste 7y ago> It does affect them, but if the sun disappeared there would still be lunar tides C'mon mate, it wasn't even two sentences. Cool about the Metonic cycle, though.
- jlj 7y agoSorry, that was very lazy reading on my part
- seandougall 7y agoThat shows that the lowest-frequency component of tidal motion is driven by the sun's gravity. But the highest-amplitude component by far is the effect of the moon's gravity, which has a period of 12 hours and 25 minutes. So yes, tides are affected by the sun, but they don't depend on it.