Days are gradually growing longer. To the layman this means that in the northern hemisphere days are longer in summer than they are in winter. But geoscientists interpret this phrase as follows: they found that days grow longer not only in spring time.
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| Days may have 25 hours in near future due to Earth’s decelerating rotation |
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The reason for that is the Moon, first and foremost. Its gravity creates permanent waves in oceans and in Earth’s depths. Thus our planet seems to waver, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung wrote.
Earth resembles a rotating figure skater. To slow rotations down, a figure skater stretches his or her arms out. That is why in the far future there will be 25 hours in a day. A British astronomer managed to prove that Earth’s rotation has been slowing down since 700 B.C.
The scientist studied clay plates and other historical writings that contained information about solar and lunar eclipses. He used the information to calculate the Earth’s breaking path.
Also read: Earth's axis displacement to lead to mammoth global changes
When prehistoric proto-animals inhabited Earth 530 million years ago, there were 21 hours in a day. For dinosaurs who lived 100 million years ago days alternated each other every 23 hours.
This can be clearly seen by marly sediments of corals. Corals seem to mark the calendar and annually form new sediments the thickness of which varies depending on the season.
By means of that scientists calculated the timescale between springs. This period has been slowing down throughout history. About 530 million years ago Earth rotated on its axis faster than it does today, but it rotated about the sun at a steady speed. At that time the year had the same amount of hours as it has today, but there were 420 days in it. According to trustworthy sources, throughout the history of mankind Earth’s rotation has been reducing its speed, Richard Stephenson from Durham University, UK, says for the Journal for the History of Astronomy.
Stephenson based his conclusions on descriptions of hundreds of solar and lunar eclipses during the last 2,700 years. Clay plates of pre-Christian Babylon substantiate the slowdown in the Earth’s rotation best of all, Stephenson wrote. Babylonian scientists used cuneiform characters to record the exact place and time of celestial events.
Moreover, Stephenson studied documents of the Chinese and European origin. Once in about 300 years people can observe the total solar eclipse from anywhere. When the Moon takes place between the Sun and the Earth, total darkness occurs for several minutes.
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