tidally locked Definition and 13 Threads

Recently, I’ve heard from Anton Petrov on YouTube that some tidally-locked planets around red-dwarf stars (such as TRAPPIST-1) have been suspected to flip around their own axis every once in a while — so that the former day side becomes the night side, and vice versa. This is presumed to happen...

Quick question from an amateur: Assume you have a tidally locked rocky planet around a red dwarf star. I've heard that a magnetic field is or can be dependent upon the rotation of a planet (I've read that the lack of rotation of Venus was a possible reason for the weak magnetic field among...

Non-Scientist here. Assume that you had a two body system (planet-moon, double-planet) where one of the bodies was very close to tidally locked. Say they are closely co-orbiting at 6 to ten diameters in a relatively quick 20 to 50 hour orbit. One of the planets is close to being tidally...

All, Non-scientist amateur looking for an answer. I understand that planetary rotation aid is vital to maintain a magnetic dynamo. Venus' slow reverse rotation is often used as an explanation for its odd low magnetic field. Assume there is a moon or a double planet that is tidally locked...

How close must a planet be to its parent star in order for it to be tidally locked?

Working on a story idea that involves binary worlds. To keep the math simple I'm assuming the planets to be Earth sized, and mass, orbiting a star identical to the sun. I managed to find someone to help with the first equations and discovered that based on the time it takes them to orbit each...

Hi PF! So I was reading about the possibility of life on planets orbiting red dwarf stars, and it was said that the major problem was that the planet would become tidally locked. With half the planet in eternal darkness, the whole atmosphere would freeze on the dark side, leaving the planet...

There's been a recent upsurge of interest in evidence for rocky planets orbiting red dwarf stars. Red dwarfs are very common in the the Milky Way and can live much longer than larger stars such as our Sun. The possible existence of several rocky planets in the habitable zone of Gliese 581 has...

According to an article I read, http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/tides.html the Earth will one day become tidally locked to the moon the way the moon is locked to the Earth today, so that the same face of the Earth always faces the moon. If this is true, how long will that process take?

Okay, so planets in the Goldilocks zone are far enough from the star that it's less likely they are tidally locked. But assuming such a thing exists - shouldn't the habitable zone be wider if the planet is tidally locked to its star? At one extreme, the planet would have an Antarctica-sized...

suppose there are two bodies,one revolving in an orbit around the other[like the Earth moon system]Differences in orbital and axial rotation of a small body results in a torque applied on it by the larger body. This results in the smaller body being tidally locked. THEN WHY ISN'T THE EARTH...

My question was piqued by this article: http://news.discovery.com/space/earth-like-planet-life.html The article claims that the planet discovered is tidally locked, but does not explain how this was determined. Presumably the planet is much too far away to be resolved by any telescope, and...

Is there an equation to predict the distance of a hypothetical planet from it's host star to be locked? (For G, K, M stars)