Typically, big things aren't easy to visualize.
The tides are a slow moving effect, with 0.0003% of the ocean mass rising up. But that 0.0003% becomes huge when dealing with a huge ocean.
my 0.0003% of $100 is tiny, but when looking at a trillion dollars, that becomes enough to do a lot with.
This is because, contrary to common belief, tides are not caused by the gravitational forces of the Moon or the Sun lifting up the oceans—their gravitational pull is much too weak for that. Rather, tides are created because the strength and direction of the gravitational pull varies depending on where on Earth you are. This variation creates the differential forces or tidal forces that in turn
cause tides. - https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/moon/tides.html
This website says the moon doesn't affect tides at all!
the first paragraph explains the second:
While both the Moon and the Sun influence the ocean tides, the Moon plays the biggest role. Although the Sun's gravitational pull on the Earth is 178 times stronger than the Moon's, the tidal bulges it causes are much smaller.
The second paragraph then talks about lifting vs pulling and other types of explanations for how the water piles up.
So the moon is lifting the oceans up, they are contradicting themselves. Maybe this is a bad source and bad tangent to go off on.
(post is archived)