A study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered that the moon is gradually drifting away from the Earth which sheds new light on the planet's relationship with its only natural satellite.
As a result, the average day will become longer.
Per reports, the research team was able to come to this conclusion after analyzing Earth's interactions with the moon: "A study by a team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focused on rock from a formation aged at 90 million years. By doing so, they were able to analyse the Earth’s interactions with the Moon 1.4 billion years ago."
The moon which is currently moving away from the Earth at 3.82 cm a year will result in days that are 25 hours long in 200 million years.
Professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Stephen Meyers had this to say about the results of the study: “As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out. 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.”
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