Posted: Jan 02, 2015 4:27 pm
Thommo wrote:Macdoc wrote:. If the Earth was not rotating there would be no equatorial bulge,
Solar bulge would be a standing wave but small and vary with the distance from the sun.
That's a different effect, in a different plane. The equatorial bulge is the bulge around the equator in the plane of the Earth's rotation about its axis, which is tilted from the plane of the Earth's rotation about the sun by around 23 degrees.
The tidal effect due to the sun is not the equatorial bulge and I don't think it's a standing wave either.
It must be, in spite of various authors and media claiming that the lunar bulge is one-sided. It would only be one-sided if the earth was not spinning on its axis, and did not have angular momentum to conserve. As it is, the lunar pull tips up the plane of the bulge.
The earth's oceans are like a large gyroscope, tipping when interfered with.