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To: Red Badger

Would an orbit only .13 AUs not be tidal locked? Therefore only one side would get constant sunlight, while the other hemisphere would be in constant darkness?

While life could exist on such a world, I think it wouldn’t be Earth-like.


20 posted on 07/20/2012 12:34:07 PM PDT by Alas Babylon!
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To: Alas Babylon!

It was once thought that Mercury was a planet that showed only one face to the Sun at all times.

From Wiki:

For many years it was thought that Mercury was synchronously tidally locked with the Sun, rotating once for each orbit and always keeping the same face directed towards the Sun, in the same way that the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth. Radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun; the eccentricity of Mercury’s orbit makes this resonance stable—at perihelion, when the solar tide is strongest, the Sun is nearly still in Mercury’s sky.[73]

The original reason astronomers thought it was synchronously locked was that, whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always nearly at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, hence showing the same face. This is because, coincidentally, Mercury’s rotation period is almost exactly half of its synodic period with respect to Earth. Due to Mercury’s 3:2 spin–orbit resonance, a solar day (the length between two meridian transits of the Sun) lasts about 176 Earth days.[13] A sidereal day (the period of rotation) lasts about 58.7 Earth days.[13]

Simulations indicate that the orbital eccentricity of Mercury varies chaotically from nearly zero (circular) to more than 0.45 over millions of years due to perturbations from the other planets.[13][74] This is thought to explain Mercury’s 3:2 spin-orbit resonance (rather than the more usual 1:1), since this state is more likely to arise during a period of high eccentricity.[75] Numerical simulations show that a future secular orbital resonant perihelion interaction with Jupiter may cause the eccentricity of Mercury’s orbit to increase to the point where there is a 1% chance that the planet may collide with Venus within the next five billion years.[76][77]


22 posted on 07/20/2012 12:51:26 PM PDT by Red Badger (Think logically. Act normally.................)
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To: Alas Babylon!

In a tidal lock there *might* be a habitable zone around the terminator but the weather would be pretty extreme.


33 posted on 07/20/2012 6:09:17 PM PDT by Squawk 8888 (Tories in- now the REAL work begins!)
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