ieee Acta Geod. Geoph. Hung., Vol. 39(1), pp. 27-87 (2004) TEMPORAL VARIATION OF THE EARTH-MOON SYSTEM PARAMETERS WITH COSMIC EVOLUTION AT Arpas! [Manuscript received June 24, 2002] We have obtained empirical laws for the variation of the Earth parameters with geologic time that are in agreement with coral fossil data obtained by Wells and Runcorn. Our model predicts that the day is lengthening at a rate of 2 ms/century at the present time. ‘The length of the day when the Earth was formed is found to be 6 hours and the synodic month 56 days. ‘The angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system is found to be increasing with time. ‘The origin of the presently observed acceleration of the Moon is explained. ‘The model predicts that the Moon is accelerating at 20.6 arc sec/cy? at the present time, Keywords: acceleration; angular momentum; Earth-Moon system; geologic time; past rotation; secular changes 1. Introduction Relativity (GTR) is one of the most fascinating theories that people have come to know. Einstein himself, after the overwhelming success of his theory when applied to the Sun, constructed a model for the whole universe. The Einstein model was a static model, in which stars (or galaxies) do not move, as appeared to him at that time. When the universe was found to be expanding with time, Einstein abandoned his model. Obtaining a static model of collection of matter alone is not possible, and this led Einstein to hypothesize a repulsive force (later known as the cosmological constant (A)) to hold his universe from collapse. Einstein regretted the addition of this constant when it appeared to him that the expansion plays the role of repulsion (A). Later, Einstein and de Sitter constructed a model for the universe (now known as the Standard Model) in which matter and radiation are distributed homogeneously and isotropically. That model is successful in many regards: it predicts an existence of a cosmic background radiation and a primordial synthesis of helium and hydrogen in the earliest stage of expansion of the universe. Such predictions are now well established facts about the present universe. However, the Standard Model is fraught with other problems which could not be solved in the framework of the Einstein-de Sitter model. An idea that the universe had once expended at an enormous rate was brought by Guth (1981) and Linde (1982) which is known as the Inflationary Scenario. This scenario solves, most if not all, of the standard model puzzles. The Standard Model gives an age for the universe of t= 2H-!, where H is the Hubble constant. This value is smaller than those 1Department of Physics, Teacher's College, Riyadh 11491, POB 4341, Saudi Arabia, e-mail: arbab@ictp.trieste.it, permanent address: Comboni College for Computer Science, POB 114, Khar- toum, Sudan 1217-8977/8 20.00 ©2004 Akadémiai Kiadd, Budapest28 AT ARBAB. obtained by astronomers. Cosmologists have found that if one still retains the concept of the cosmological constant the age problem can be resolved. However, a pure constant might pose a problem, from the point of view of particle physicists who estimated its value at the Planck time to be 120 orders of magnitude smaller than its present one. In fact, the idea of a variable is associated with Dirac (1937) who noticed some puzzling coincidence between atomic and cosmic scales. He found the age of the universe in terms of atomic time to be about 10", the ratio between the electric and gravitational forces of an electron and a proton (e.g., in hydrogen atom) to be about 10" and the ratio of the Hubble radius (observable radius of the universe) to the classical radius of electron to be about 10°. He thought that the coincidence of these dimensionless huge numbers is not accidental, but must have a physical origin. In order that this coincidence to hold at all times, and not just for the present time, he proposed that the gravitational constant has to change with time inversely, ie, G xt". Therefore, to Dirac, the expansion of the universe lead to a weakening of the gravitational constant. Later, Brans and Dicke (1961) (BD) formulated a field theoretic model in which G is related to a scalar field (@), that shares the long range interaction with gravity, viz. Go @~!. Their theory predicts a decreasing G, as in Dirac model, but with a lesser rate. For conformity with the present observations regarding the solar system, BD theory becomes indistinguishable from GTR. The BD theory is set to satisfy Mach principle which asserts that our local physics is affected by the presence of distant matter in the universe. ‘The variation of G with time would have numerous geological and astronomical consequences. For instance, the luminosity of the Sun depends on G. The distance between the Earth and the Moon, the length of the month, the Earth’s surface temperature, the length of the day and the Earth’s radius would all be affected. Shapiro et al. (1971) have set an upper limit to the present variation of G, viz., [Glo < 4x 10-!y- (hereafter, the subscript ‘0° refers to the value of the quantity at the present time). A comprehensive investigation of the effect of the variation of G can be found by Wesson (1978). However, Booth (Booth 2002) stated that to verify that G does vary over cosmological time scales it is necessary either to measure its value directly using a Cavendish type experiment, or to turn to evidence from geophysical and astrophysical measurements. Since Cavendish experiments currently only achieve an accuracy of 10-®, these are not capable of detecting changes in G (one part in 10~!° per year). However, the laboratory determinations of the gravitational constant according to CODATA (Mohr and Taylor 2000) had an accuracy of 10-4 One has to look to the other sources for indirect evidence of a time-varying G. This is in fact what we have done in this paper. The idea that gravity increases with time was proposed by several authors (Abdel Rahman (1990), and references therein). Levitt (1980) suggested a variation of the form G « t. In line with that, we have recently proposed a cosmological model and have found that the gravitational constant has to increase in order to resolve the cosmological contradictions of the Standard Model with observations. This represents a minimal change of the Standard Model to fit the current observational Acta Geod. Geoph. Hung. 39, 2004EARTH-MOON SYSTEM PARAMETERS 29 data. We have found that G « ¢? in the early universe, but generally evolves as G x t2n-V/(-"), where n is related to viscosity of the cosmic fluid. We have shown in that work that many non-viscous models are equivalent to viscous models with variable gravity (Arbab 1997). Our model does not determine n exactly but rather imposes a constraint that 4 3 (or 8 > 3) (Arbab 1997, 2003). ‘The purpose of this paper is to determine n from a different source of data that was not tried before. A fixed value for n (or f) is found from studying the evolution of the Earth-Moon system, viz. n = 0.7 (or 8 = 12). This immediately implies that the Moon must be accelerating in its orbit while approaching the Earth. The same effect should be observed in the motion of the Earth around the Sun. 2. The Sun-Earth-Moon system Kepler's second, and third laws governing the Sun-Earth-Moon system can be written as G(M + m)?m5]T = 2nL, () G[(M + M,)?M3]¥ =2nN%, G[(M + M,)M?]R = N?, (2) where m = mass of the Moon, M = mass of Earth, M, = mass of the Sun, L = the orbital angular momentum of the Moon, N = the orbital angular momentum of the Earth, r = the Earth-Moon distance, R = Earth-Sun distance, Y = the number of days in a year and T' = the sidereal month. It is believed that N has remained constant throughout the Earth history while L changes with time. The synodic month, Tyy, is related to the sidereal month by the relation (3) From the above equations one can write YT _(lo\* n wT (2) , 4 Based on the slowing down of the Earth’s spin with time, the conservation of total angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system dictates that the Moon angular mo- mentum has to increase. It is evident from Eq. (1) that if G increases then so will L. It can also be inferred from Eq. (1) that if L increases then r must increase. In this case the Moon will lose its kinetic energy as it goes away from the Earth. However, observations show that the Moon is accelerating in its orbit (Dickey 1994), which, in turn, means that the Moon is gaining kinetic energy. Here lies the conflict and Acta Geod. Geoph. Hung. 39, 2004