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. Differential Forces Consider a water molecule in the ocean. It is attracted gravitationally by the Earth, but it also experiences a much smaller gravitational attraction …showed first 75 words of 940 total…

…showed last 75 words of 940 total…further below. For example, 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.