The Moon and the Earth are like two dancers locked in an eternal tango. Like their human counterparts, the interaction between the two affects both. A study carried out by experts at University of Wisconsin-Madison has underlined that days on Earth are getting longer, all because of the Moon and in future, a day on Earth may have 25 hours.
It is well known that although the Moon revolves around the Earth, it is slightly drifting away and each year, the Earth's only satellite is about 3.8 centimetres farther than what it was previously.
“As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out,” explains Stephen Meyers, professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Meyers is co-author of that study.
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The study said that when in distant past, when the Moon was much closer to Earth than now, a day on Earth only had 18 hours. It means Earth was able to complete one revolution in 18 hours. As the distance between the Earth and the Moon increased, the size of the day on Earth increased. This is due to the gravitational interaction between Earth and the Moon.
The experts at University of Wisconsin-Madison said that in 200 million years from now a day on Earth will have 25 hours.
The study these scientists carried out was not primarily about length of a day on Earth however.
“One of our ambitions was to use astrochronology to tell time in the most distant past, to develop very ancient geological time scales,” Meyers says. “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.”
The study has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientific journal.
