vulcanism and tidal forces

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Enola Straight
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vulcanism and tidal forces

Post by Enola Straight »

I was always taught that the main mechanism for the intense heat within the earth is due to radioactive decay.

What amount of heat is generated due to the moon's tidal forces?

(Earth's most abundant liquid is magma, not seawater :wink: )

I ask this because the only body in our solar system with more volcanic activity is Io, a moon of Jupiter; this moon is subject to even more tidal forces than the Earth.
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Kuroneko
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Post by Kuroneko »

It shouldn't be much at all. Since the luminosity of the Sun is P = 384.6e24W, the perpendicular solar irradiance at 1AU is I = P/(4*pi*AU²) = 1.368e3W/m². I've calculated here that the Earth's thermally radiates about 8.39e16W, while the total incident power at an albedo of a 0.306 is 5.34e16W, i.e., a significant fraction of the Earth's heat is generated internally, while a quick websearch shows that the Moon's tidal forces slow down the Earth's rotation on the order of centimeters per century (figures varied, but they were all in this range; trying to sort them out as to which is accurate is uninteresting, so I'll skip that). Treating this as torque on a sphere of Earth's mass, this represents a power drain (τ⋅ω) of order 1e12W, which must be compensated for in some way. This is really an upper bound, and is still much less than the 1e16W order that should be generated internally. As to Io, it also has other moons with which to play.
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