Time warp

Brace yourself, Earth is heading towards 25-hour days
By Finn Blythe | Current affairs | 8 June 2018

Top image courtesy of Nasa.gov

If you’re feeling drained by the relentless rigamarole of life, the burn of that nine to five slog, you might want to look away now. We’d love to tell you it will only get better, that tomorrow is another day, but the truth may no longer be quite so simple.

Because in a stunning announcement made this week by Space.com, days on this blue and green ball are in fact, getting longer. And not in an exciting Summer equinox way either, this is the result of the moon and earth growing increasingly distant. Like that ex you can’t shake off, the earth and moon are now desperately trying to put some distance between each other, only this has little to do with emotional turmoil and 2am texts, but the tides. See, on average, the moon is about 239,000 miles away, but due to changes in tidal forces our natural satellite is spinning slowly further away at a rate of around 1.5 inches a year.

Nothing too drastic, sure, but the increase in distance results in our planet’s orbit slowing down, meaning we could find ourselves at the farcical point where a single day is 25 hours. That’s a little over two weeks added on to each year fyi. We’d like to come up with some profound and intelligent insight into the implications this would have on day-to-day life, but so far our Friday brains are unyielding, apart from that 24hr shops would have to change their signs, wrist watches would be consigned to redundancy and 24 Hours in Police Custody would become a slightly longer show. The really important stuff. For those insufferable ‘go-getters’ amongst you, who relish the idea of ‘more time to do stuff’, don’t get too excited just yet as this process may take a few billion years. Still, something to think about.

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