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3rd May 2025
04:55pm BST
NASA have said that they believe a man-made structure is actually slowing the Earth down due to its size.
China's Three Gorges Dam has stretched the length of a day, according to Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao, a geophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre.
Located on the Yangtze River in China's Hubei province, the Three Gorges Dam is 2,335 meters long and 185 meters high.
It holds close to 10 trillion gallons of water at a height of 175 meters above sea level.
It is the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, and according to NASA, it has made a slight change to the Earth's rotation, which has led to a day being increased by 0.06 microseconds.
Dr Chao said: "For reference, this amounts to a bit more than 3 days over the entire age of the universe."
It comes from the volume of water held in the dam, which has shifted the Earth's mass and has slightly slowed its spin.
Dr Chao added: “Any time you shift mass around, you change the Earth’s rotation.
"The effect is very small, but measurable.”
According to research from NASA, the length of a day has increased and the Earth's axis by 2 centimetres.
