Comment by pjc50
3 days ago
Technically it's the momentum of the earth-moon system; tides are a continuous input of energy into the oceans taken from the rotation of the earth relative to the moon. Tides lose energy to friction. I don't think that increasing tidal friction would have effects back on the planetary system, but it might reduce overall tidal amplitude. Very slightly.
Friction makes the tidal bulges lag slightly, which means they're a little bit ahead of where the moon is. That produces a net acceleration on the moon that raises its orbit. Increasing tidal friction should increase the lag which should increase the speed at which the moon's orbit raises. Completely insignificant at human scale, of course, but technically it should be doing something.
The sci-fi writes itself. Having averted climate catastrophe by switching to renewables 23rd century humans face the imminent catastrophe of disrupting the entire solar system dynamics after wrecking Earth-Moon orbital stability with their reckless energy extraction.
This one's free, KSR, sir.
> The sci-fi writes itself. Having averted climate catastrophe by switching to renewables 23rd century humans face the imminent catastrophe of disrupting the entire solar system dynamics after wrecking Earth-Moon orbital stability with their reckless energy extraction.
In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I will merely advise anyone interested in a story with similar themes and content to read Signal to Noise and its sequel A Signal Shattered by Eric S. Nylund. You may know him from his work on the Halo franchise or other popular games. I don’t really know his other work, since I first discovered him via his original works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Nylund
Less "23rd century" and more like "23,000,000th century".
I've read a lot of science fiction involving macroscale engineering on such levels, but I think even the most misanthropic science fiction writers have a hard time imagining a species that can start meaningfully affecting the orbital dynamics of their solar system but are clueless about possible negative side effects. By the time you're postulating such things, all the negative side effects that may leap to your mind involve energies many, many orders of magnitude smaller than the disruptions themselves, e.g., "oh no our satellite orbits", well, divert .000000000001% (I just hit some zeros, that's not calculated carefully) of the energy to fixing the satellite orbits. You're going to anyhow.
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It’s raising the moons orbit and slowing the earths rotation. But changing either by even 1cm/second would take a long time even if you’re extracting 1 TW 24/7.
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Fact: The Moon orbit moves away 3.8 centimeters per year.
We have reduced tidal friction much more significantly by removing mangroves and killing coral reefs, general coastal buildup.