The Three Gorges Dam, located in China, impresses with its incredible capacity to store 42 billion tons of water when fully operational. However, its impact goes beyond that. Scientists claim that this immense amount of water concentrated in a single location could affect the Earth's rotation, resulting in slightly longer days.
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The dam, built with steel and concrete, has an impressive dimension of more than 2.3 km in length. long and about 182 meters high, making it a subject widely discussed in the press. International.
The Three Gorges Dam, built across the Outang, Wu and Xiling canyons, was envisioned by Sun Yat-Sen as a means of boosting China's manufacturing industries.
After several interruptions, construction was completed in 2012, at significant cost and environmental and political controversy. The dam is home to a diverse range of wildlife, but it also faces challenges such as erosion that threatens wildlife and fisheries in the East China Sea.
The dam is currently home to a rich diversity of life, including 6,400 species of plants, 3,400 species of insects, 300 species of fish and over 500 species of terrestrial vertebrates. However, erosion in the reservoir has caused recent landslides, posing a threat to animals and nearly paralyzing important fishing activities in the East China Sea.
According to NASA, it was recently confirmed that this imposing structure is responsible for slowing down the movement of our planet.planet. According to the researchers, this phenomenon can be explained by Newton's 1st Law, also known as the Principle of Inertia. By retaining an immense amount of water, the dam affects the Earth's mass, resulting in a minimal increase in the length of a day, approximately 0.06 microseconds.
While the discovery is fascinating, experts say this change in Earth's rotation is not a cause for great concern. After all, the length of days is already naturally affected by several factors, such as the influence of the Moon, earthquakes and even climate changes that affect the movement of the North Pole.
According to NASA, every five years, the length of a day on Earth increases by about one millisecond. Therefore, the delay of 0.06 microseconds caused by the Three Gorges dam is considered practically irrelevant in terms of its impact on our daily lives.