Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Spain, Sep 2.- We are used to knowing that, once every 24 hours, the Earth completes one rotation on its axis, marking what a day on our planet represents for us. This rotation period helped us create systems that dictated to us the exact moment/time of day we were and, of course, to animals and plants when it was time to wake up or go to rest.
The division of the Earth into 24 time zones is directly related to its rotation. Each zone represents the section of the Earth that experiences a particular time of day.
Although this has not always been the case. When the dinosaurs lived, the day did not last 24 hours, but rather 23. In fact, for more than 1 billion years, the length of the Earth's day was 19.5 hours, to be precise). This is because the Earth rotated faster than it does today and the pull that the Moon exerted on it was weaker (and therefore the days lasted less).
As a curiosity, when our planet was created, about 4.5 billion years ago, an Earth day lasted approximately 10 hours because the Earth rotated much faster than it does today. Over the course of billions of years of life on Earth, scientists have discovered not only that a day was equivalent to about 19 hours on that early Earth, but that in the future, it will not last 24 hours, but longer.
The science behind longer days
Why will the days on our planet become longer and longer? The responsible party is the Moon, which is gradually moving away from our planet and its gravitational impact is having consequences on the Earth, causing the Earth's rotation to slow down and making the days increasingly longer.
It all has to do with the moon's tidal pull on the oceans and the sun's tidal pull on our atmosphere. According to scientists' forecasts, in about 200 million years, days could be 25 hours long. The research represents a significant advance in the understanding of the Earth's rotation through rotational dynamics.
“Fluctuations in rotation are not only important for astronomy, we also urgently need them to create accurate climate models and better understand weather phenomena such as El Niño,” explained Ulrich Schreiber, project leader at the Observatory of the Technical University of Munich and who published his findings in a study in the journal Nature Photonics. “And the more precise the data, the more accurate the predictions will be.”
Let us remember that the exact time it takes our planet to complete a single rotation can vary by small fractions of milliseconds each year due to certain factors such as the movements of the tectonic plates, changes in the rotation of the inner core or the gravitational pull of the Moon. And its initial speed depended on the force with which the dust, rocks and gas that revolved around the Sun collided to form our planet.
Goodbye Moon, goodbye
Earth's days were shorter billions of years ago largely because the moon was closer to our planet. The problem is that the Moon is moving away from us, slowly but gradually and without rest. At a rate of approximately 3.78 centimeters per year, it will continue to distance itself from the Earth, as it has done since the Earth was created, but, in about 50 billion years, it will eventually settle into a stable orbit and stop moving away from us.
This distancing occurs because the friction between the Earth's surface and the large amount of water resting on it causes the Earth's rotation on its axis to become slightly slower over time.
Implications
What are the exact implications of this event or transformation for Earth? Although this change will occur on a geologically considerable time scale, many organisms, including humans, have circadian rhythms that are closely aligned with the 24-hour cycle, so having 25-hour days could, in theory, influence biological processes, although such changes would occur so slowly that it is likely that evolution will be in charge of adapting (or adapting us) to the new conditions.
The same goes for the weather: the effects will be as subtle as they are imperceptible. The rotation of the Earth, therefore, is an essential element for life on our planet and understanding how it is changing is interesting for our knowledge although, by the time the days last 25 hours, we do not know if there will be anyone here to measure it. (Taken from Very interesting) (Text and photo: Cubadebate)
