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Literally all moons in the solar system are tidally locked, 1:1, to their parent body. That is the norm for tidal locking. Mercury, lacking ocean or even atmos
by moloch-hai 4y ago
Literally all moons in the solar system are tidally locked, 1:1, to their parent body. That is the norm for tidal locking.
Mercury, lacking ocean or even atmosphere, and mostly frozen solid, is accorded leeway a putatively-habitable planet does not get.
Word games are tiresome. Mercury's 2:3 spin-orbit resonant "lock" is interesting but off topic.
- Dylan16807 4y agoIt's not about word games, it's about how high the prevalence of 1:1 locking is. Especially when you use words like "all" and "can't spot". Looking at the moons in our solar system is evidence but not definitive.
- moloch-hai 4y agoLooking at the hundreds of moons defines "locked" without qualification to imply 1:1. Mercury is literally the only body in the whole solar system in any sort of more complicated "lock". So, no, it really is about word games.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago> Mercury is literally the only body in the whole solar system in any sort of more complicated "lock". So, no, it really is about word games. How would you even begin to demonstrate this is true? There are so many bodies in the solar system, and we're still fairly frequently discovering new minor planet moon-systems..
- moloch-hai 4y agoFind another. It would not change anything.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoDunno man. It's very hard to draw statistical inferences based on a solar stellar system. It would even require significant motivation to argue that the measurements are independent.
- moloch-hai 4y agoThe topic here is the word game defrost and now you promote. Does "tidal lock", absent further detail, imply 1:1? Yes.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoThe meaning of a word is conventional.
- moloch-hai 4y agoAnd of exactly zero interest. The original topic, so cleverly but pointlessly derailed, was the viability of planets we can just barely detect in extremely close orbit around a dim star, in 1:1 tidal lock, with permanently hot and a cold sides, and, likely, no magnetic field. That merited discussion.
- Dylan16807 4y agoIf you don't care about "word games", I suggest you stop arguing about "locked" and focus on the actual point, which I rephrased for you. The actual point is about prevalence. > hundreds of moons > literally the only body They are all moons, not planets, and not in different star systems. That's not enough to make conclusive statements about exoplanet spin. That statistic is more relevant to the word games but I'm not here for word games either. It doesn't matter if "lock" implies 1:1.
- moloch-hai 4y agoOnly 1:1 locking is of any interest here. All these exoplanets are certainly so locked. Whether life can arise on such a planet is of course unknown, and will remain so until we find any, but it seems unlikely to me.
- Dylan16807 4y ago> Only 1:1 locking is of any interest here. Agreed, what matters is what percentage of these planets are 1:1 locked. > All these exoplanets are certainly so locked. How do you know? Just citing moons in our system isn't enough.
- moloch-hai 4y agoEasy, 100%. Do you imagine that fusion occurring in the parent body makes any difference? Tidal locking involves nothing but gravity and friction.
- Dylan16807 4y agoSizes of both objects, speeds, distributions of the chunks coming together, these things have effects. It's not just about being moons but the way you're extrapolating from a single system. And telling everyone to ignore Mercury because you're too right is not helpful.
- 4y ago