Why is the Moon causing the days on Earth to get longer and longer?

Written in SCIENCE he 3/24/2023 8:29 p.m.

Half a century has passed since the last visit to the Moon and humanity continues to wonder if it is so cold and inhospitable and if it contains water and other resources. Currently, thanks to technology and science, experts have discovered new data about this satellite. Among them, is that it is causing the days in the Land get longer and longer.

The time it takes the Land turning around its own axis is called a solar day, which, according to the gravitational relationship of the planets with the Sun and its satellites, lasts 24 hours.

In this context, the Moon It is the only natural satellite of the Land and their gravitational relationship affects the tides, this has generated a small bulge in the ocean basins. Over time, the planet’s rotational energy has been used up, causing the Moon to make days longer.

According to a report published on the Nat Geo website, experts estimate that 4.5 billion years ago, the days lasted just 13 hours, almost half the time it takes the Earth to rotate on its own axis today.

Why don’t we human beings see the change in the length of the days?

Astronomers from the University of London affirm that this change has been very gradual and barely perceptible to living beings. In all this time, although the Moon it has made the days longer, it has done so in billions of years. For example, since the late 1600s, the length of an Earth day has increased by just 1.09 milliseconds.

This is how Tom Eulenfeld, a geophysicist at the Schiller University of Jena (Germany), explains it:

“The faster rotation of the earth shortened the length of the day so that within a period of 24 hours]there were two sunrises and two sunsets, not just one like today,” details the specialist.

According to the study he recently published with a team of scientists, this promoted the reduction in temperature difference between day and night. Over time, he affected the biochemistry of photosynthetic organisms: the first hints of terrestrial life.

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