A shocking new study has revealed that the Moon is slowly moving away from Earth.
It is currently moving 3.8cm away from our planet every year – and has been for billions of years before.
today, The moon is 238,855 miles away, but it was once much closer.
About 2.45 billion years ago, it was just under 200,000 miles away.
The moon also has an inhibitory effect Earththat is, the further away, the longer the day.
So 2.45 billion years ago there were 16.9 hours in a day compared to the 24 hours we have now.
This means that the length of a whole day will increase even more, although it will be millions of years before it even starts to matter.
We have known for a long time that the Moon is gradually receding.
During 1969 Apollo missionsExperts noticed something strange in the reflective panels installed on the surface of the moon.
It is at this point that NASA realized that our nearest neighbor moves away by 3.8 cm every year.
Now scientists have confirmed this and delved into the distant past, looking at the gorge in Australia.
They studied ancient rock layers from Karijini National Park in the west of the country.
“It is very surprising that the dynamics of the solar system in the past can be determined from small variations in ancient sedimentary rocks,” wrote Professor Joshua Davies and researcher Margrit Lantink. Conversation.
“However, one important point of the data does not give us a complete understanding of the evolution of the Earth-Moon system.”
Their results are published in the journal PNAS.
Learn more about science
Want to learn more about the weird and wonderful world of science? From the moon to the human body, we’ve got you covered…
We pay for your stories! Got a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk
