New research has shown that the Moon is gradually moving away from Earth.
It currently moves 3.8cm closer to our planet every year. This has been happening for billions of dollars before.
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The Moon is now 238,855 miles from Earth, but once it was closer.
It was located just below 200,000 miles from Earth, 2.45billion year ago.
The Moon has a braking impact on Earth. This means that the Moon moves further, the longer a day will last.
Back 2.45billion year ago, there were 16.9 hours per day. This is a vast improvement on the current 24 hour days.
This means that every day will be longer. However, it will take many millions of years before it makes a difference.
For some time, we’ve known that the Moon is slowly backing off.
Experts discovered something odd about the reflective panels that were installed on the lunar surface during 1969 Apollo missions.
At this point, Nasa realized that our nearest neighbour was moving 3.8 cm away with each passing year.
Scientists now support this claim and have analyzed a gorge in Australia to find out what the distant past was.
They examined layers of ancient rock from the Karijini Park in the West of the country.
“It’s quite amazing that past solar system dynamics can be determined from small variations in ancient sedimentary rocks,”Margriet Lantink and Professor Joshua Davies wrote about it The Conversation.
“However, one important data point doesn’t give us a full understanding of the evolution of the Earth-moon system.”
Their findings were published in PNAS journal.
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