If the moon is able to cause rising tides with its gravity, how come it cannot do the same with the atmosphere? Wouldn’t this cause the atmosphere to leak significantly?
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The moon does not cause tides by lifting the ocean up; the moon causes tides by squeezing the Earth into a football shape (that’s why we have two high tides per day: there are two points on the football).
The atmosphere is also squeezed into a football shape, and so there are atmospheric tides as well.
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