Did you know that the melting polar ice caps are actually making our days longer? 🤯
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that as the ice in Greenland and Antarctica melts, water flows toward the equator. This shift adds more mass around Earth's middle, which slows down our planet's spin—kind of like a figure skater who stretches out her arms to slow down her twirl. ⛸️
Surendra Adhikari from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains, \"It's like when a figure skater does a pirouette, first holding her arms close to her body and then stretching them out. The initially fast rotation becomes slower because the masses move away from the axis of rotation, increasing physical inertia.\"
You might think of Earth as a perfect sphere, but it's more like a slightly squished ball—an \"oblate spheroid\"—that bulges at the equator. And this shape isn't fixed; it's constantly changing due to factors like ocean tides, tectonic plate movements, and even major earthquakes and volcanoes. 🌋
Using advanced techniques like Very Long Baseline Interferometry and GPS technology, scientists have measured these tiny changes in Earth's rotation down to one-hundredth of a millisecond! They even looked at ancient eclipse records going back millennia to understand how Earth's spin has changed over time. 📡
So, how much longer are our days getting? Since 1900, the melting ice has added about 0.8 milliseconds to our days. By 2100, under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, climate change alone could lengthen days by an additional 2.2 milliseconds. That might not seem like much, but it has big implications. 🌡️
Why does this matter? Well, for space travel and satellite communication, precision is everything. Even a tiny shift in Earth's rotation can throw off calculations when communicating with spacecraft millions of kilometers away, like the Voyager probes. 🚀
As Adhikari notes, \"There are definitely a lot of implications for space and Earth navigation.\" Knowing the exact orientation of Earth is crucial for these technologies. So, climate change isn't just warming our planet—it's also subtly slowing it down! 🌎❤️
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
