Here’s a fun puzzle about tidal forces.
Suppose a planet in a tidally-locked circular orbit of radius R around its star experiences tidal stretching T (measured in your favourite units for acceleration per distance).
If a wandering planet, with negligible spin, fell into this solar system on a head-on collision course for the star, what tidal stretching would it experience when its distance from the star was also R?
@gregeganSF
My initial intuition is that there's no difference between the two situations to a first approximation.
Both planets are in free-fall and relatively non-rotating WRT the star. What's the difference?
(I'm probably missing something here?)
#physics #CelestialMechanics #astronomy #maths
@spacemagick @gregeganSF this is one where a picture would have helped
