Debunked Myths

While the Moon is indeed the primary conductor of Earth's tidal rhythms, crediting it alone ignores the crucial supporting role of the Sun. The Moon's gravitational pull creates bulges in our oceans—one on the side facing the Moon and another on the opposite side—as Earth rotates through these bulges, we experience high and low tides.

However, the Sun, despite being 27 million times more massive than the Moon, is also 400 times farther away, making its tidal influence about half as strong as the Moon's. The Sun acts as a modulator of the tidal volume. When the Sun, Moon, and Earth align during new and full moons, their gravitational forces combine to create especially high 'spring tides.' When the Sun and Moon are at right angles during quarter moons, their forces partially cancel out, producing weaker 'neap tides.'

The simplification that 'the Moon causes tides' reflects our tendency to seek single causes for complex phenomena. The reality is an elegant gravitational dance between two celestial bodies—the Moon setting the basic rhythm while the Sun fine-tunes the intensity, creating the predictable tidal patterns that have shaped maritime navigation and coastal ecosystems for eons.