#goscience

Tidal-locking usually takes place over a large, gradual amount of time - several million or several billion years. There’s actually an equation that estimates the time it takes for a body to tidally-lock to another one:

But don’t worry about it. I just like math. ;-)

The equation states that the faster the planet rotates and the farther away the other body is, the longer it takes to achieve a tidal-lock. Conversely, the more massive the planet and the other body the less time it takes to achieve a tidal-lock.

As to the effects to the world as it moves towards being tidally-locked, well, just look outside - assuming you’re on Earth, that is.

The Earth’s rotation is actually slowing down and approaching a tidal-lock with the Moon. The Moon is, or course, already tidally-locked to the Earth.

As the Moon creates tides and the Earth rotates inside them, that friction generated does two things - it slows the Earth’s rotation, and it allows the Moon to get slightly farther away from the Earth. Eventually, the Earth and Moon will both be tidally-locked, keeping the same face towards each other.

That’s going to take a while. The Moon is receding at the rate of about 4 cm per year, and the Earth is slowing down at the rate of about 2 milliseconds every century. At these blistering speeds, it will only take about 50 billion years to achieve tidal-lock.

Sadly, it will never happen because the Moon should drift away from the Earth first. Actually, the Sun will go all red giant on us and vaporize both Earth and Moon before the Moon can drift away. Looks like we’re stuck with each other until death. ;-(

Assuming that a planet has a larger, closer moon, and does actually tide-lock with it over a couple of billion years, the climate will have changed so much that the planet will become almost totally unrecognizable. Considering the changes that would take place over billions of years anyway, the effects of being tidally-locked are negligible in comparison.

However, if a planet were to slow down much faster - say on a human scale of a few decades to a few centuries - then the effect would be much much stronger. The planet’s climate will start to radically change as temperature extremes will start to become more pronounced and animals and plant life will struggle to adjust to the lengthening day/night cycle.

Massive ecological disruption would be the best outcome of this situation. I could see most of a society’s resources turned towards mitigating or even just surviving the changes.

The word that most accurately describes our recent work is “INSPIRE.”

Following the successful Science Fair on December 3, 2016, the 2017 campaign "Go! Science: Together We Spread Science Spirit” was launched. This was the first time MSMS implemented the science event series outside of Ho Chi Minh City. The science camp and coffee shares were the two primary activities of our Go! Science Campaign.

On September 9, 2017, the first science camp to kick-off this event series was conducted at Nguyen Binh Khiem High School (in Quang Nam, a province in central Vietnam), attracting around 200 high school students to participate. During this event, there were three main science activities to encourage careers in the field of science, as well as provide knowledge about science, including science booths, uni-life reveal, and science quizzes. 

The “science wall,” covering all science articles published by the MSMS content community, was displayed on the way to the camp.

Inside, there were many science-related activities from our three labs: Health Science, Applied Science, and Environmental Science. The interactive activities included DNA extraction, medical oil formulation, blood type identification, Arduino board set-up, robot interaction, dendrology, and many more.

All participating students were engaged in the “science quiz” to recall all the information in their tour of the science booths.

Apart from the science camp, the two coffee shares were conduced by our Health Science Lab and Applied Science Lab on September 10 in Da Nang. The two coffee shares covered a couple topics.

- Digital Era: To be Sheep or to be Wolves?

- Pain Has Its Secret: That's What You Think?

The science camp in Ba Ria High School (Ba Ria - Vung Tau - nearly 100 km from HCMC) was the closing event for our Go! Science series. On September 23, 400 students attended the camp, far exceeding our expectations!

Most students were inspired by expertise 'monitors' in different classes for our uni-life reveal. A variety of career paths were also covered, including the fields of medicine, pharmaceutical sciences, chemistry, environment, robotics, and programming. 

Aiming to nurture a passion for science by engaging students using a non-academic method with a simple, interdisciplinary, and applicable approach, we - MSMS - have been pleased to receive very positive feedback from participating students:

"This is the first time I have joined such a great event about science." - Nhat, 17, from Quang Nam

"I have never imagined science is so close to everyday life like that." -Khiem, 18, from Ba Ria

"I'm so impressed by your knowledge as well as the enthusiasm you bring here." -Hai, 23, a volunteer from Da Nang

This feedback make us proud of the work we have done, doing our part to spread the science spirit among Vietnamese youth. Go! Science is not only about the milestone events we conducted, but also the close-knit MSMS family we have built.