Tim_Lou Posted May 20, 2006 Report Share Posted May 20, 2006 imagine 2 bodies in space. one is the sun, the other is the planet. they are perfectly rigid and spherical. these 2 bodies are separated quite far apart. Imagine the non-uniform gravitational field the planet experiences. due to its non-uniform nature, gravitation force do not act exactly at the planet's center of mass (the position should be a little bit closer to the sun than the center of mass). Consider this: when the earth spin at a non-zero inclination angle, the gravitation pull would result in a net torque on the planet, which results in precession. i have worked out a approximation of this torque (10 page paper..). what i did was basicaly directly integrating over the whole sphere (the planet) while using some reasonable approximations in between. however, no one has ever validate it nor do i know if it is mathmetically correctly or has been discovered before... any comments or inputs are appreciated. if you are interested, i can post my project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erasmus00 Posted May 20, 2006 Report Share Posted May 20, 2006 These fores due to the non-unifrom nature of the gravitational field are known as tidal forces. Googling should give you lots of interesting information. -Will Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim_Lou Posted May 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted May 20, 2006 hmm, very interesting, never thought of internal strain caused by these forces. i can imagine these force causing current to flow in the magma resulting in a magnetic field. I hope I'm not too far off, am I? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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