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> Is there anywhere else in the solar system that can claim that? I know Mercury shares this. Not super useful, except at the boundary.
by Supermancho 3y ago
> Is there anywhere else in the solar system that can claim that?
I know Mercury shares this. Not super useful, except at the boundary.
- ben_w 3y agoI'm 90% sure you're mixing up two other things, about planets in the goldilocks zone of red dwarfs being tidally locked to their host star? Mercury definitely isn't tidally locked to the sun, and its sidereal day isn't a whole integer fraction of Earth's year. I'm not 100% certain without doing some algebra, but don't think it's even possible for one planet to be tidally locked to any planet in a different orbit, be that Mercury to Earth or otherwise, owing to the distance not being constant while angular momentum has to be. (If two planets share an orbit, there are an infinite number of trivial solutions).
- Supermancho 3y agoIndeed, you are correct. https://www.quora.com/Is-Mercury-tidally-locked-so-that-one-side-always-faces-the-Sun https://www.quora.com/Is-Mercury-tidally-locked-so-that-one-... There is more info about what is and is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking