As the moon is going away from the Earth, the days are getting longer and longer. With the gravitational pull of moon goes weaker with it’s drifting away, the days on our planet will go longer.
In a recent research, the scientists had found out that, 1.4 billion years ago, the days were lasted about 18 hours.
Every year, the moon is drifting away from our planet approxiamtely, 3.82 cm. And with it’s drifting, the gravitational force the moon is putting on us, is growing weaker, and our days are going longer.
“As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out.” Stated by, University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of the study, Professor Stephen Meyers.
“One of our ambitions was to use astrochronology to tell time in the most distant past, to develop very ancient geological time scales.”
“We want to be able to study rocks that are billions of years old in a way that is comparable to how we study modern geologic processes.”
With the climate changes that happened through the history of Earth, Professor Meyers and his colleagues had tried to determine the cylces of moon that had moved away.
They had stated that, ”beyond about 1.5 billion years ago, the moon would have been close enough that its gravitational interactions with the Earth would have ripped the moon apart.”
Lamont Research Professor at Columbia, Professor Alberto Malinverno had stated that, “It was exciting because, in a way, you dream of this all the time; I was a solution looking for a problem.”
“In the future, we want to expand the work into different intervals of geologic time.”
Professor Meyers also added that, “The geologic record is an astronomical observatory for the early solar system.”
“We are looking at its pulsing rhythm, preserved in the rock and the history of life.”
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