Randall D. Knight — Rotation of a Rigid Body: Problem 84

The earth’s rotation axis, which is tilted \(23.5^{\circ}\) from the plane of the earth’s orbit, today points to Polaris, the north star. But Polaris has not always been the north star because the earth, like a spinning gyroscope, precesses. That is, a line extending along the earth’s rotation axis traces out a \(23.5^{\circ}\) cone as the earth precesses with a period of 26,000 years. This occurs because the earth is not a perfect sphere. It has an equatorial bulge, which allows both the moon and the sun to exert a gravitational torque on the earth. Our expression for the precession frequency of a gyroscope can be written \(\Omega = \tau / I\omega\). Although we derived this equation for a specific situation, it’s a valid result, differing by at most a constant close to 1, for the precession of any rotating object. What is the average gravitational torque on the earth due to the moon and the sun?