"Paul Schlyter" wrote in message
...
There is no "official" definition of these words which conflicts with
your use. I don't think there's any "official" definition at all for
these words. After all, these words are pretty self-explanatory.

Because the moon
gravity felt here on earth is several times as strong as the sun gravity
the

No, it's not!

You're probably thinking of the tidal forces rather than the gravitational
forces. The tidal forces are inversely proportional to the cube of the
distance, which means the tidal force from the Sun is some
27 million / 390 ^ 3 = approximately 0.45 times the tidal force from
the Moon.

Posted by E.D.G. October 17, 2008

Thanks for those valuable comments. It took several days for the Newsgroup
postings to appear on my Internet server, hence the delayed response.

As there does not appear to be a problem with the use of the terms "subsolar
point" and "sublunar point" we will plan on continuing to use them on an
informal basis.

Regarding the strength of the sun and moon gravities, what you said makes
sense to me. The earth does rotate around the sun and not around the moon
to the same extent.

However, what this means is that I now have to go back and review the
theories on which my earthquake related programs are based. The programs
work. And that means that the equations they are using must be correct.
But those equations are apparently not working for the reasons I thought
they were probably working.