It's not about word games, it's about how high the prevalence of 1:1 locking is. Especially when you use words like "all" and "can't spot".

Looking at the moons in our solar system is evidence but not definitive.

Looking at the hundreds of moons defines "locked" without qualification to imply 1:1.

Mercury is literally the only body in the whole solar system in any sort of more complicated "lock". So, no, it really is about word games.

> Mercury is literally the only body in the whole solar system in any sort of more complicated "lock". So, no, it really is about word games.

How would you even begin to demonstrate this is true? There are so many bodies in the solar system, and we're still fairly frequently discovering new minor planet moon-systems..

Find another. It would not change anything.

Dunno man. It's very hard to draw statistical inferences based on a solar stellar system. It would even require significant motivation to argue that the measurements are independent.

The topic here is the word game defrost and now you promote. Does "tidal lock", absent further detail, imply 1:1? Yes.

The meaning of a word is conventional.

And of exactly zero interest.

The original topic, so cleverly but pointlessly derailed, was the viability of planets we can just barely detect in extremely close orbit around a dim star, in 1:1 tidal lock, with permanently hot and a cold sides, and, likely, no magnetic field. That merited discussion.

If you don't care about "word games", I suggest you stop arguing about "locked" and focus on the actual point, which I rephrased for you. The actual point is about prevalence.

> hundreds of moons

> literally the only body

They are all moons, not planets, and not in different star systems. That's not enough to make conclusive statements about exoplanet spin.

That statistic is more relevant to the word games but I'm not here for word games either. It doesn't matter if "lock" implies 1:1.

Only 1:1 locking is of any interest here. All these exoplanets are certainly so locked. Whether life can arise on such a planet is of course unknown, and will remain so until we find any, but it seems unlikely to me.

> Only 1:1 locking is of any interest here.

Agreed, what matters is what percentage of these planets are 1:1 locked.

> All these exoplanets are certainly so locked.

How do you know? Just citing moons in our system isn't enough.

Easy, 100%. Do you imagine that fusion occurring in the parent body makes any difference? Tidal locking involves nothing but gravity and friction.

Sizes of both objects, speeds, distributions of the chunks coming together, these things have effects. It's not just about being moons but the way you're extrapolating from a single system. And telling everyone to ignore Mercury because you're too right is not helpful.

The point is that these planets orbit extremely close to their star: much closer than Mercury is to the sun, never mind Venus. That is what matters. It has literally nothing to do with any sort of magickal moonityness. Mercury is not special; it is just not locked 1:1. Yet.

Moons in our solar system orbit closer to planets than planets to the sun, so get locked much more quickly. Venus and even Mercury have not quite got there. Earth is in a more complicated arrangement, which helps us avoid it. That might even have been essential for life.

You may read up elsewhere on what determines the tidal forces, friction, and rotational momentum and energy that determine how long it takes to get into a locked state. That would be smarter than word games.