The Finger and the Moon: From Eclipses to Angular

Momentum (and some more) in Astronomy

Rafael Andrés Alemañ Berenguer
Astronomical Society of Alicante
agrupacion.astroalicante@gmail.com
Apartado de Correos 616
03080-Alicante (Spain)

Keywords : Earth-Moon interaction, physics in astronomy, College non-majors,

interdisciplinary, teaching approaches.

Abstract
Taking the existence of sun eclipses as a starting point, I briefly sketch some features of
celestial dynamics for pre-university students who attend for the first time an astronomy
course and who have a proper physics background. I specially point out the time
evolution of angular momentum in a system of two orbiting bodies of finite size, like
the Earth-Moon couple. This supplies us with a good occasion to discus several topics
on how physical systems change with time and how some links between astronomical
and terrestrial processes can be identified.

1. INTRODUCTION
One of the most obvious handicaps we usually find when teaching pre-university
students –and even undergraduate ones too– about astronomy and astrophysics is due to
the fact that they are used to thinking of physics applications in a highly idealized level.
Because of this, our students are often unable to distinguish those factual conditions that
allow us to obtain specific conclusion from a purely theoretical approach. This is
especially true for astronomy courses whenever we try to take benefit from our previous
physics knowledge. As a rule, students do not realize that heavenly bodies are not point-
like masses, nor they have a perfectly spherical shape. In consequence, many results of
gravitational theory when it is applied to planets and stars will not be the ones our
students would expect to find.
One outstanding instance of these misconceptions is that, for their exceptionally long
periods of existence, many astronomical cycles are supposed to be eternal. Therefore,
students must be warned about those effects that are extremely weak but constantly
accumulative. Despite we can neglect that kind of effects in a particular situation, we
should not do it when forecasting the behaviour of astronomical processes, whose
duration is long enough to let these little accumulative effects manifest their influence.
In order to achieve a considerable improvement of the way these problems are solved, I
choose a sun eclipse as a departure point for further discussions on all these subjects.
Previous experiences showed me that it is very useful and interesting to add some
examples of biological processes that are influenced by astronomical cycles. This
strongly persuades students that all systems in nature, organic or inorganic, are
continuously interacting among them.

2. DO ASTRONOMICAL CYCLES CHANGE?

To see around us is a good exercise to discover unexpected consequences of the things
we regard absolutely familiar. In the evening, if we successively cover with our thumb
the Moon and the Sun in the sky (provided that we can see a full moon that day), it will
be evident that both of them get concealed. This means that the Moon and the Sun have
the same angular size. And this is the proper moment to discuss with the students such
relevant topics in astronomy as angular sizes, solid angles, relative distances between
celestial bodies, and the distortion caused in relative positions by projecting spatial
coordinates (three dimensions) onto a two-dimensional surface (the sky hemisphere).
The Sun is, of course, much bigger than the Moon, but it is also quite further away than
our satellite. This coincidence in apparent sizes is why we can watch Sun eclipses form
the Earth.
But, was always this that way? In other words, are always astronomical parameters
time-independent? Students are strongly tempted to give a positive answer, because
they do not have reason to think of any other possibility. At this stage of the debate, the
teacher starts exposing the amount of experimental evidences that the situation is not so
easy. In order to achieve our purpose it is very advisable to remind the students of many
examples of astronomical changes: the Sun and the Earth were not always as they are
now; celestial bodies suffer transformations and finally die. Why should we think that
the Moon orbit around the Earth is eternal? In conclusion we will see that astronomical
cycles change, and indeed the rate of change is different in different ages!

3. OBSERVATIONS AND EVIDENCES

There is plenty of paleontological evidence that comes from what is named tidal
rhythmites, or tidally laminated sediments, which are the growing lines we can find
regularly separated in fossils, as the growing rings inside trees. This lines growth
critically depends on geological and biological cycles that are, in turn, influenced by
astronomical cycles. Provided that, paleontologists and geologists (Ma, 1958; Wells,
1963, Kahn & Pompea, 1978) were able to deduce changes in day and month durations
over very large periods of time by studying the pattern of growth for this laminated
structures in fossilized creatures (especially, corals and Nautilus).
This paleontological evidence has been thoroughly subjected to study over decades, an
even long before (Darwin, 1878, 1879, 1880). As long as this scrutiny has reported
strong evidences (Williams, 1990), we can claim that 650 million years ago, the lunar
rate of retreat was 1.95 ± 0.29 cm/year, and that over the period from 2.5 billion to 650
million years ago, the mean recession rate was 1.27 cm/year. A more careful analysis of
the same data (Williams, 1997), showed a mean recession rate of 2.16 cm/year for the
last 650 million years. The reliability of these data is supported by an overwhelming
amount of proves (Lambeck, 1980; Archer, 1996).
4. APPLIED THEORIES
Why is the theoretical behaviour so different from the real facts? Because any scientific
theory is an idealization, which must be implemented with factual conditions and
experimental data to produce useful information. If we assume –for mathematical
simplicity– that two masses in the Newton’s Law of Gravitation are point-like, we
regard them as having no physical size. Therefore, as long as all real masses are not
pointlike, we should not be surprised if they do not exactly obey gravitation laws. It is
true that Newton equations works very well for masses separated by distances very
large compared to their radius, but only as a good approximation.
When such masses are not separated by distances quite large compared to their size,
there appear physical effects known as “tidal forces”, or merely tides (Munk &
McDonald, 1975; Touma & Wisdom, 1994; Ray, Bills, Chao, 1999). This tidal effect is
a mechanical stress due to the fact that extended bodies are not equally pulled on every
point of themselves by the gravitational attraction caused by other bodies. The result of
this situation for the Moon-Earth system is a differential gravity, an attractive force that
is not constant over the distance between the moon and the various parts of the Earth
(Bills, 1999).
The Earth, being rather closer to the near-side of the Moon, pulls harder on it, while it
pulls less strongly on the side of the Moon that is farther away. This variation in force
applied at different points, or tidal gradient, is what produces the distortion in the shape
of both Earth and the moon.
This tidal effect creates a friction between oceans and continents (Hansen, 1982; Kagan
& Maslova, 1994; Kagan, 1994), which slow down the Earth spin rate and transfers
energy to the Moon –if the angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system must be
conserved– causing it to speed forward in its orbit, and therefore move farther away
from the Earth. The consequence is clear: the Moon is slowly drifting away from the
Earth (Goldreich, 1966). This is a matter of fact that has been repeatedly confirmed by
astrophysical measures (Dickey, 1994).

5. CONCLUSIONS
A long practice in teaching astronomy and applied physics has put forwards that
students (and often their teachers too) can drop several advantages from this topics.
Summarizing, these advantages are:

1º) To understand that scientific theories describe idealized situations (point-like

masses, systems with no friction, interactions between two isolated bodies, etc.) that
sometimes require specific improvements in order to offer realistic answers.

2º) To realize that astronomical cycles are subjected to change exactly as any other
natural process. There are no ever-lasting regularities; even the motion of celestial
bodies are not eternal but dynamically evolutionary. The impression of permanent
regularity comes because we perceive many time-dependent processes during too short
periods of time to detect their time dependence.

3º) To know that different sciences are not isolated areas: astronomical cycles influence
biological and geological rhythms, and we can draw a big amount of relevant
information about our world studying this kind of interdisciplinary links.
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