I\'m thinking of writing a short story set on a version of Earth that is tidally
ID: 1376621 • Letter: I
Question
I'm thinking of writing a short story set on a version of Earth that is tidally locked to the Sun. I'm not exactly sure how to research the topic. Here's a number of questions about what would happen:
How hot would the light side get? Are we talking ocean-boiling levels? I imagine that life would eventually flourish, given the massive constant energy source. Is this accurate?
On that note, I imagine massive thunderstorms along all the coasts due to increased evaporation. How bad would they get? Would the ground ever see the Sun, or only rainfall?
How cold would the dark side get? Is it conceivable that any life could still exist there? (Life has proven itself quite versitile in the past, i.e. life at the bottom of the ocean.)
What wind speed would the twilight zone experience? I imagine the atmosphere would transfer heat from one side to the other, but would the wind speeds be bearable? In what direction would air flow?
I hear that the oceans would recede into disjoint northern and southern oceans if the world stopped spinning. Would this also happen if the Earth became tidally locked?
Would the Sun create a 'tidal' bulge in the ocean at the apex of the light side? Would this or the above dominate ocean behavior?
Would we completely lose the magnetic field? Would life be able to survive without such shielding from magnetic radiation?
Would the Moon eventually unlock the Earth? What state would the Moon have to be in for there to be both a locking between the Sun and the Earth as well as the Earth and the Moon?
What other radical differences would exist between our Earth and a tidally locked alternative?
Explanation / Answer
There are a lot of questions here, and I'm more sure about the answers to some of them than I am about others. But nevertheless, I'll give it a go.
The first and most important question is what would the temperatures be like. This is the one I'm least sure about. The reason I'm unsure is that it's highly dependent on a lot of things that would probably be quite different on a tidally locked Earth. These include the greenhouse effect (which is highly dependent on water vapour), albedo (which depends on how many clouds there are, as well as on ice), and most importantly on the wind speeds.
If there was no heat transport from the hot side to the cold side then we could expect the temperatures to be similar to the temperature range on the Moon - around -150