MDMD Time & Tide

[Terrance]

How interesting that *Tenebrae* peers through  *Candle light.* Why are
they lighting a mechanical solar system during advent? 

In addition to revolving around the sun, the Earth rotates on its axis
and the axis of the Earth's rotation is tilted at an angle of about 23.5
degrees. Earth's rotational period is 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds.
Our clock however is set according to a 24 hour day. Every four years,
the 3 minutes and 52 seconds left over
from each day adds up to one full day. To adjust our calendars for this
imperfection, we have  Leap Year.

The tides at a given place in the Earth's oceans occur about an hour
later each day. Since the Moon passes overhead about an hour later each
day, it was long suspected that the Moon was associated with tides.
Newton's Law of Gravitation provided a quantitative understanding of
that association. 



Moreover, the Moon exerts a gravitational force on every object on and
in the Earth. Tides occur because the Earth is a body of finite extent
and these forces are not uniform: some parts of the Earth are closer to
the Moon than other parts, and since the gravitational force drops off
as the inverse square distance, those parts experience a larger
gravitational tug from the Moon than parts that are further away. 

And not only the Moon, but other objects in the Solar System, influence
the Earth's tides. For most their tidal forces are negligible on Earth,
but the differential gravitational force of the Sun does influence our
tides to some degree (the effect of the Sun on Earth tides is less than
half that of the Moon). 

And, as a consequence of tidal interactions with the Moon, the Earth is
slowly decreasing its rotational period and eventually the Earth and
Moon will have exactly the same rotational period, and these will also
exactly equal the orbital period. Thus, billions of years from now the
Earth will always keep the same face turned toward 
the Moon, just as the Moon already always keeps 
 the same face turned toward the Earth.  


What does Euphie Mourn?  Paradise lost before her time. Well it is
Advent. Dixon says, Newton is his Deity. Oh, the heavy loss. 


Mask mourns  the loss of his youth. Mask is caught, it seems, between a
natural lunar cycle and the clock. Enough to make any man seem
straightway dangerous I suppose. Who says he's mad? A Clock? An
instrument
of time soon to be boxed up for its own protection and sent out to sea.
Sounds like another case of the clock calling the ocean black. Mason?
Yeah, he's a good judge of sanity.   

Much Madness is divinest Sense-- 
To a discerning Eye-- 
Much Sense--the starkest Madness-- 
'Tis the Majority 
In this, as All, prevail-- 
Assent--and you are sane-- 
Demur--you're straightway dangerous-- 
And handled with a Chain--