Since you ask for a very specific effect, the answer is: Possibly.
Tidal evolution can cause a whole lot of things. I leave it off for most of my sims, because it's hard to predict what it does and when it does something, it is rather hard to tell whether the observable effect was caused by tidal evolution or simply by a bad orbit.
In general tidal evolution influences the mass distribution within a body, causing its own center of mass to move. Centrifugal forces influence the rotation of that body then and thus also move the barycenter of any two bodies orbiting each other. That may cause the orbiting to speed up or slow down and it often causes two bodies to get "face locked", i.e. the same points of their surfaces always facing each other. In the case of the Moon that effect only worked for the Moon but not for Earth so while the rotation of Earth is influenced by moons gravity, the Moon is always showing its heavier side to the Earth.
Topic: Tidal Evolution (Read 1993 times)
