The Moon to be Blamed for the Days on Earth Getting Longer

According to a study which concluded that 1.4 billion years ago a day persisted for a little more than 18 hours. All credits to the movement of the Moon far away from the planet, the days on earth are gradually getting longer. Scientists discover that this phenomena is due to the fact that Earth’s rotation is getting slower. 

The published study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, restructures the historic core of Earth’s relation to the Moon. It depicts that 1.4 billion years ago, the Moon was much closer and altered the way the Earth whirled around its axis. For analyzing this relation, researchers made use of rock sediments.

Professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Professor Stephen Meyers explained that, when the moon moves farther, the Earth behaves similar to a spinning figure skater that slows its pace as they stretch their arms out.

Presently, the Moon is distancing away from Earth at a rate of 3.82 cms each year, and this speed is posing all sorts of tough questions for scientists.

Being presumptuous that this rate of movement has remained constant, in that case the moon ought to be so close to Earth 1.5 billion years ago, that the our planet’s gravity would have ripped the moon apart.

Nevertheless, scientists have stated that the moon is 4.5 billion years old. Meyers further said, that the team made use of a novel statistical method that enables scientists to probe the geologic past of the Earth and discover ancient climate change.

He stated, "One of our ambitions was to use astrochronology to tell time in the most distant past, to develop very ancient geological time scales.” He also mentioned that the team wishes to study rocks which are billions of years old in a method that is comparable to the way presently modern geologic processes are studied.

A researchers’ team at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University made use of a rock formation in Arizona to determine the symmetry of our planet’s orbital fluctuations.

In the meanwhile, yet another team in New Zealand had worked with Meyers, to determine whether how alterations in Earth’s rotation and orbit on its axis have had an effect on the cycles of evolution and extinction of marine organisms known as graptoloids, going back 450 million years.