Astrophysicist and master science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson is blowing people’s minds by describing how tides actually work, as opposed to how we see them as mere humans.
He recently described the “misunderstood” phenomenon in an episode of “Star Talk” with co-host Chuck Nice.
“Tides are widely misunderstood. The next thing I say may be mind-blowing to you. The tide doesn’t actually come in and out. What happens is there is a bulge of water, two of them, on opposite sides of the Earth,” Tyson began his discussion.
“They are caused by the Sun and the Moon and Earth turns inside that bulge. So when we say [the tides] rise and fall, tidally what is happening is we are rotating into the bulge and then out of the bulge,” he continued.
The quick explanation exposes an even greater scientific idea, that humans are limited in understanding because of our perspective and language. “So we’re stuck with language, from our own perspective, rather than the language of what’s actually happening,” Tyson explains. “It’s simpler to say the water goes in and out. It’s simpler to say the sun set rather than, Earth rotated such that our angle of view on this stationary sun fell below our local horizon.”
For a more in-depth description of how tides work from “Star Talk,” check out the video below. The famed scientist also wrote a blog post on the tidal forces back in 1995, which describes the phenomenon on an even deeper level.
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