Empirical Earth · Gravity, Buoyancy & the Air

Two oceans, forty-two miles apart, one Moon, different tides

The claim

“Tides just need the Moon pulling on water. A flat Earth explains that fine.”

What is true

The Moon does pull on the water, and that is not in dispute.

What is measured

On the Caribbean side the water rises and falls less than a foot in a day. On the Pacific side it averages twelve and a half feet, and the largest spring range on record is 22.3 feet. The general case is in. Same Moon, same instant, forty-two miles apart. Whatever sets the size of a tide, it is not the strength of the pull.

What would show this is wrong

two ocean basins connected by a short isthmus showing matched tidal ranges and matched timing under the same Moon; or an account of tides in which basin geometry plays no part and the range depends only on the strength of the lunar pull.

Sources

  1. Panama Tides. U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1926, Vol. 52/4/278. Sixteen years of American tide records at the canal entrances; the higher mean level at Balboa; and the observation link
  2. Marmer, H. A. (U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey) on the stationary wave explanation of the Panama tides. The Caribbean end opens into a basin closed by the Antillean island chain whose oscilla link
  3. A century of tidal evolution around the Panama Canal (2024). Regional Studies in Marine Science. Two tide gauges longer than 110 years at Cristobal and Balboa. Observed nodal modulations of link
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