Though I have never ventured into the discussion on the tides, it being a mystery, outside my comprehension, I've decided to look at it. Some have claimed the moon does not cause the tides. Well this raises more questions.. If the moons gravity is not the cause, then certainly something related to the moon and its position above, is the cause. I'm going to think on that. Also we have the anomaly of the pendulum under the lunar eclipse which NASA though claiming attention to it seem to be avoiding it, or have no answer. Further, in my own writings re gravity/inertia, to Allen, I find seeming contradictions about this whole business. Is it just a matter of scale and distribution.. I read others mathmatical analysis, and I acknowledge that I am not gifted in maths, and cannot comment specifically, but I have experienced enough to know that a mathmatical analysis is only as true as the data inputted.. Leave something out and it is in error. And that is always on the cards. A physicist who understands nature, should be able to explain movements without resort to complex formulae. At this moment I am having doubts. If I was correct about gravity in the effects on free fall, affecting every particle equally in the space vehicle, then how can the water be pulled up separately and further than the rest of the Mass earth? Shouldn't the whole thing stay together and dance a wobble with the moon? Just a bigger spacedhip. Was it Regner, who said that the solid world is spinning under the tides? Someone did. I thought it at one time. This cannot be true, and I mean true in the conventional system The tide is like a wave form. Water flows to both sides of the crest of this wave. The ocean as a whole like the atmosphere must rotate with a general speed similar to the solid earth. Imagine the turbulence if this was not so. In geocentricism: Just a small final word , as regards geocentrism, and how far we can take the Biblical claim to the earth shall not move. If the earth is absolutely still, then the moons variations of the elliptic, must not cause any secondary orbital/translationary movement to the earth. What that does to the barycentre, the math man can tell us. But I feel, intuitively that if the earth was FIXED the moon would have to eventually form a true circular orbit. Wouldn't it. This is where the aether , the universe , and independent motions, (of the moon.) make a complex problem as regards dynamics. (from our viewpoint) One motion of the moon around the world almost daily, is not an individual movement, but rather a locked in with the "aether sphere" rotation, and therefore, not like a normal real independent movement as with similar orbiting moons around other solar system planets. In addition the moon has its own independent motion against this universal movement. What we see is the resultant. But what we feel inertially is the standard 28 day orbit. Just as what we feel inertially with respect to the earth, is a 24 hour rotation. The two systems are dynamically equivalent as regards inerial properties. But the tide follows the moon, which means that the universal rotation of the stars, aether, and slipping moon, all contribute in some way to the tides. I have much to retreat into my shell to think about.. comments welcome.. Guiding lights. Philip