"Friar Broccoli" wrote in
ps.com:

Hi;

Dumb question #1:

It is my understanding that about 4 billion years ago the
moon was much closer to the earth than today (correct ?).
and as a result of bumping into dust/asteroids etc. it has
gradually lost energy and therefore moved AWAY from the
earth.

The movement of the Moon away from the Earth is caused by transfer of
angular momentum from the Earth's rotation to the Moon's orbit. This
comes about through tidal interaction and has nothing to do with
dust/asteroids etc. BTW the Moon's orbit has greater energy than when
the semi-major axis was less than it is now. Note that this also means
the period of the Earth's rotation is slowing lengthening. i.e the day
is slowly getting longer.


My intuition tells me that as the moon looses
energy/momentum it should be less able to resist earth's
gravity, and therefore move NEARER to the earth. Why is my
intuition wrong?

See above.




Dumb question #2:

I live in Quebec City Canada, which is somewhere around the
47th parallel. Since that is far north of the Tropic of
Cancer (the most northerly height of the sun in late June) I
had always just assumed that the sun would ALWAYS be south
of east in the morning, and south of west in the evening.

No. The extreme case is at the poles where the Sun doesn't set at all at
the height of summer.


Recently I noticed that that does not appear to be the case.
In late June, if I draw a line pointing to the sun first
thing in the morning, and another just before the sun goes
down, the interior angle is a lot less than 180 degrees. It
appears that this angle is about 150 degrees on the NORTH
side of my house. This makes no sense to me and is
beginning to drive me insane. I assume I am seeing the sun
north of east/west in the morning/evening, but why?

The Earth's axis is tilted a little over 23 degrees to the 'normal' of
the ecliptic. The ecliptic is the plane of the Earth's orbit about the
Sun, which is thereby tilted at a little over 23 degrees to the plane of
the Earth's equator. On the day of the northern Summer soltice, the
Sun's declination is a bit over 23 degrees North of the equator. It's
just a bit of projective geometry. Download a skycharting program and
explore.

Klazmon.



Cordially;


Friar Broccoli
Robert Keith Elias, Quebec, Canada Email: EliasRK (of) gmail * com
Best programmer's & all purpose text editor: http://www.semware.com

--------- I consider ALL arguments in support of my views ---------