The Tethered Moon
Kevin J. Zahnle, Roxana Lupu, Anthony Dobrovolskis, Norman H. Sleep

TL;DR
This paper models Earth's post-Moon formation thermal evolution, emphasizing atmospheric cooling limits and tidal heating effects, revealing slow orbital evolution and early resonance capture with implications for lunar orbit characteristics.
Contribution
It introduces a comprehensive model accounting for atmospheric and tidal effects on Earth's cooling and lunar orbital evolution after the Moon-forming impact.
Findings
Earth's magma ocean cools over 2-10 million years.
Atmospheric cooling limits Earth's heat loss to ~100 W/m^2.
Orbital evolution is much slower than in constant Q models, affecting resonance capture.
Abstract
We address the thermal history of the Earth after the Moon-forming impact, taking tidal heating and thermal blanketing by the atmosphere into account. The atmosphere sets an upper bound of ~100 W/m^2 on how quickly the Earth can cool. The liquid magma ocean cools over 2-10 Myrs, with longer times corresponding to high angular-momentum events. Tidal heating is focused mostly in mantle materials that are just beginning to freeze. The atmosphere's control over cooling sets up a negative feedback between viscosity-dependent tidal heating and temperature-dependent viscosity of the magma ocean. While the feedback holds, evolution of the Moon's orbit is limited by the modest radiative cooling rate of Earth's atmosphere. Orbital evolution is orders of magnitude slower than in conventional constant Q models, which promotes capture by resonances. The evection resonance is encountered early, when…
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