Recently, NASA confirmed that a massive man-made Dam in China is slowing down the Earth’s rotation, owing to its size and weight. How crazy is that?!
Depending on the day and time and what we have going on, we all complain that there’s ‘not enough time in the day’ to get everything fitted in. Laundry, work, library, taxi service for the children, afterschool activities, Pilates (gym or Yoga), getting dinner ready, catching up with work, social media, fitting in a date with our loved one, baby sitting, visiting friends….and the list goes on.
But did you know that thanks to the Dam in China, your day is actually being extended by 0.06 microseconds? Doesn’t seem like much in our day-to-day activities, but according to Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao (a geophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre), 0.06 microseconds equates to “a bit more than 3 days over the entire age of the Universe”.
So why do we care? It’s not like it affects us directly, does it?
This enormous Dam located on our planet, Earth, is now influencing how the Universe ages. That is both mind-boggling and a bit nuts.
The Three Gorges Dam is located on the Yangtze River in Hubei province. It was completed in 2012 and is 2,335 metres long and 185 metres high. It holds 40 cubic kilometres of water, which equates to about 10 trillion gallons of water. That’s a lot of showers & baths, and cups of tea! Further the water is stored at 175 metres above sea level & it has been reported that the power production from the Dam is about the same as 15 nuclear reactors (but without the mess).
Dr. Chao explained why this is happening as “Any time you shift mass around (which is what the Dam has done), you change the Earth’s rotation. The effect is very small, but measurable”.
According to measurements taken by Dr. Chao’s team they have found that each Earth-day has now been lengthened by 0.06 microseconds and the Dam has shifted the Earth’s axis by 2cm. This is all due to the volume of the huge amount of water that is being held back by the Dam. Concentrating all that weight in one place has shifted the distribution of the Earth’s mass and this change alone is believed to have increased Earth’s inertia effect, leading to the 0.06 seconds daily gain.
I wonder what would happen to Earth if there was a project of this magnitude on every continent? Would the planet be pushed off its usual axis? Would such large schemes contribute to climate change? Or would we be eventually pushed into a black hole? Interesting thoughts, but I have no answers.
What do you think?
[Original article on Yahoo! by Kegan Mooney, 30th April 2025. You can read it here: NASA confirmed massive man-made project is slowing down the Earth's rotation due to its size]