Scientists have discovered that the Moon is moving away from Earth, something that changes everything we thought we knew about our planet’s relationship with its only natural satellite, according to indy100.
The Moon is slowly moving away from the Earth. PHOTO Shutterstock
The removal of the Moon from the Earth has a very real impact on the length of days on our planet, but at an extremely slow pace, the consequences of which will be felt over millions of years.
How it was concluded that the Moon is moving away from the Earth
The finding was made following a study by a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which focused on rocks from a 90-million-year-old formation. The researchers were able to analyze the Earth’s interactions with the Moon and get an idea of what happened over 1.4 billion years, reaching the surprising conclusion.
When the terrestrial days will be longer
Specifically, it appears that the Moon is moving away from Earth by 3.82 centimeters per year, which means that eventually, in 200 million years, Earth days will be 25 hours long.
“As the Moon recedes, the Earth is like a figure skater spinning and slowing down as she stretches her arms. One of our ambitions was to use astrochronology to tell time in the most distant past, to develop very old geological time scales. We want to be able to study billion-year-old rocks in a way comparable to how we study modern geological processes“, explained Stephen Meyers, professor of geosciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, according to the cited source.
Information about the moon is also set to be updated thanks to China’s space program, which has discovered hidden structures that could help researchers reconstruct the past of Earth’s natural satellite.
