Damn glad for this change. With an 18 hours day I wouldn't get any sleep at all.
No lie-in this morning? Thank the Moon's gravitational pull
Are you tired and grumpy after such a long day? Well, now you know what to blame: the Moon. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Columbia University, in the US, found that days on Earth grew longer as the Moon inched further away. Some 1.4 billion years ago, a day lasted just over 18 hours, the eggheads …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 08:52 GMT el kabong
That's easy to fix, it would still be 24×60 minute hours in a day...
and 60×45 seconds in an hour.
See how easy that was, by shrinking the minute to 45 seconds your objection is fully resolved, why complicate things, there's no need for that.
As you can attest LDS' remark above stands correct.
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Thursday 7th June 2018 19:22 GMT jake
Re: Wait ...
You need to learn to write better contracts, son. Even in my 9-5 days the company started paying me when I set foot out my front door, and continued paying me until I returned home. Granted, some of it was comp time or flex time, but I was compensated nonetheless.
Justification? I wouldn't be traveling if they didn't ask me to, so they could damn well pay me for it! Yes, a few companies balked ... but there is plenty of work out there. Their loss, not mine.
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Thursday 9th August 2018 15:01 GMT Mips
Yes and...
...not only will the days get longer but the moon will fly higher still until eventually it departs orbit! (Yes this will happen; look in Wikipedia). Just think of the fix we will be in then with no tides and very long and cold nights and long red hot days. How's your beach holiday now?
And another thing; some lunatics want to build tidal power plant. Mad! It will slow the earth's rotation even sooner.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 10:33 GMT Michael Strorm
Re: How large of a tide would that have been?
@DougS; This video is an artist's impression of what it would look like even closer than *that*- specifically, if the surface of the moon was at the distance from earth of the International Space Station (circa 400km, which would require the moon's centre to be at a distance of 2158km).
Except that- as you already realised- in reality, it wouldn't because- leaving aside the fact the video is slightly speeded up (the moon would take more like five minutes to cross the sky)- the tsunamis generated by the tidal forces at *that* distance would have waves literally kilometres high and running for your life probably wouldn't do much good.
Not to mention that- as also spotted by Brewster's Angle Grinder- the earth would be stretched, leading to huge earthquakes and increased heating resulting in volcanism that would probably boil the oceans away anyway, so you'd probably die due to lava rather than flood.
Which is nice.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 10:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Are you sure?
Are we sure it would stay in one piece and not be tidally broken if orbiting at 400km? That seems too close some how. Especially to then recede, and not have atmospheric drag and crash (though the size of the thing, the energy it would contain in orbital velocity probably could never be slowed by just atmosphere...).
[edit]
Oops! You said *if* it was, not *it* was... my mistake.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 16:21 GMT Michael Strorm
Re: Are you sure?
@TechnicalBen; I rephrased my comment slightly after posting, so I apologise if (as I assume) you were replying to what I'd originally said.
And yes, you're correct- the Slate article (the second link) makes clear that indeed the moon *would* be tidally broken (which I should have added myself), "So we wouldn’t even have a Moon; we’d have a thick debris ring composed of ex-Moon. That would be cool to see, too, except for the whole everyone being dead thing."
Which is also nice.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 11:21 GMT Martin Gregorie
Re: How large of a tide would that have been?
And for an impression of what the incoming high tide might look like, just watch 'Interstellar' again.
The scene on the water world where their spacecraft lands in a vast area of shallow water and only just gets away before the tidal wave swamps it may be pretty close to what you'd see on Earth when the moon was still in a close orbit. Except, that is, that both Earth and Moon were rather hot at the time: think glowing lava rather than blue water.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 10:29 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
Re: How large of a tide would that have been?
"How large would it have looked in the sky?"
About 9 times large than today. But it would be 80 times fainter - because the light it reflects, which hasn't changed, is now spread out out over a much larger "area". My fag packet suggests the full moon would only be about as bright as Sirius. So it wouldn't be visible in the day. Eclipses would be far more common, though.
I used to know the numbers about tidal heights. But I can't fault the answer above (except for using miles). Remember tides are very complicated, shaped by local geography, and the sun is responsible for about a third of the height. However the most important thing to worry about is not the ocean tide but the tidal movement of the Earth's crust. Imagine the fucking earth's surface raising and shrinking by 100s of metres twice a fucking day.
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Thursday 7th June 2018 18:04 GMT Steve the Cynic
Re: How large of a tide would that have been?
About 9 times large than today. But it would be 80 times fainter - because the light it reflects, which hasn't changed, is now spread out out over a much larger "area". My fag packet suggests the full moon would only be about as bright as Sirius. So it wouldn't be visible in the day. Eclipses would be far more common, though.
You need a new fag packet. At night, the moon reflects(1) light from the *Sun*, and that light, per square metre of lunar surface is just as bright with a close-in moon as with a far-out moon.
(1) No, it *scatters* it. The difference is important, because although the scattering isn't uniform, it is roughly inverse-square in perceived intensity.
So there are several effects going on...
* The light hitting the moon is neither brighter nor dimmer.
* The light that we would see in a particular circular milliarc-second is increased by the decreased distance, on an inverse-square basis.
* The light that we would see in a particular circular milliarc-second is decreased by the decreased number of square metres in the circular milliarc-second, on a positive-square basis.
* The above two effects cancel out, so the circular milliarc-second would look neither brighter nor dimmer than today.
* The moon would occupy many, many more circular milliarc-seconds of sky, so it would overall be much brighter.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 17:19 GMT Mark 85
Re: How large of a tide would that have been?
It would have been impressive to sit on the beach and see that huge moon hovering over the ocean, until you saw that huge wave coming at you like a tsunami and you had to run for your life!
Cowabunga!!!! Surf's up!!!! But the downside is all the volcanic activity from the Earth's crust being pulled.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 07:51 GMT jmch
Interesting times...
I've often thought our 7-day week and uneven number of days a month were overly clunky to work with even though I understand their link to the Earth's motion. But good to know we can change them.
I propose a 5-day week. We'll eliminate Tuesday and Wednesday*, which leaves a more satisfying proportion of the week as weekend. 6 weeks a month gives us 30-day months, but we'll eliminate July and August (screw you, Caesers!), and finally Sept / Oct / Nov / Dec can really be the 7/8/9/10th months. 300-day years would give us days of a bit over 29 hours, so we gain 5 hours a day to sleep and/or do all those things that a day never seems long enough for.
Now, all we need to do is calculate how far away the moon needs to be, and start pushing!
*I would have eliminated Monday but since it's the day dedicated to the moon, kind of appropriate to keep it
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 08:03 GMT rmason
Re: Interesting times...
Ladies of the earth would unite and stop your plan.
Can you imagine getting them all to sign off on agreeing to a be a bit older? And to "age faster" going forwards?
You try telling my mum she's has to agree to be a couple of years older, because we're moving the moon.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 08:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Climate
"the amount of solar radiation received on Earth also changes affecting the climate."
But this is due to all those filthy hydrocarbon-powered cars yanking the sun closer to us, right? Or, heaven forbid, incandescent lightbulbs...
Because, you know, those are the things that lead to climate change; anything out of our control wouldn't be taxable you see, so it can't be allowed.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 23:01 GMT W.S.Gosset
Re: Climate
Actually global temperature stopped increasing in 1998 and has been dropping since 2000. That's why the old raw(ish) temp.datasets got pulled around 2005 and why they have been replaced with models. I'm not joking: HADCRUT4 etc are models, not data.
Oh, and "extreme weather events" are running at half the long term average. Ask the insurance companies' catastrophe modellers, who don't have the luxury of ignoring data in favour of meme.
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Thursday 7th June 2018 07:46 GMT NomNomNom
Re: Climate
"That's why the old raw(ish) temp.datasets got pulled around 2005 and why they have been replaced with models"
Which only begs the question what data you are using to declare global temperature stopped increasing in 1998 and has been dropping since 2000! Because by your loose definition all temperature datasets will be "models" - hence your admission in brackets.
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Thursday 7th June 2018 15:01 GMT Jtom
Re: Climate
The oceans absorb solar radiation, and the sun plus ocean cycles, created by decades of absorbing solar energy, determine the air temps. It is obvious looking at the heat content and volume of the oceans compared to the heat content and volume of the atmosphere, that the oceans drive the temps.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 14:41 GMT handleoclast
Isn't the human circadian rhythm ~ 25 hours? If I'm right, why? Surely it should be shorter than 24, not longer?
Do some research on phase-locked loops. When free-running they hit one or other end of their frequency range.
The human circadian rhythm, when free-running, isn't 24 hours. Take the humans out of the isolation enclosure and put them where they can see daylight again and it will regain its synch to 24 hours.
There's a similar effect with crabs and tides. Put them somewhere there are no tides and their activity slowly drifts from synchronization.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 10:11 GMT Wellyboot
Geostationary Moon at some point
I'm not quite understanding how the tidal force could push the moon further out once it had increased its distance from Earth and reached a near geostationary position. Would there not have been millions of years with a slightly egg shaped Earth and zero tidal action?
Or has the moon always been outside of the geostationary distance since its formation 4.5Bn years ago? (shorter day=lower geo/sync)
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 10:30 GMT John Mangan
Re: Geostationary Moon at some point
The article states that the Earth rotated more quickly in the past so although the Moon was at the - current - geostationary orbit it would still have lagged behind the Earth. And it still does - Earth rotates in 24 hours, Moon orbits in one month so that looks like a continuous process where the moons orbit has gotten longer faster than the Earth's day has lengthened..
Also remember that the Moon doesn't orbit the centre of the Earth but a point somewhere between that and the surface. It's that asymmetry/angular momentum combined with the tidal effects that has the demonstrated effects on orbital distance and day/orbit period.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 11:27 GMT DropBear
Re: Geostationary Moon at some point
While the Earth and Moon do indeed orbit around a shared barycentre (and surely ultimately everything affects everything else when you get to the small print) at a first glance I don't really see what role it might have in tidal effects. Or is this a "small print only" effect...?
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 18:42 GMT Cyril
Re: Geostationary Moon at some point
Okay, start with the Earth and Moon in orbit of each other and not rotation in relation to each other. The gravity of the Moon pulls the liquid surface of the earth toward it making it slightly egg shaped. The center of gravity is directly between the Earth and the Moon.
Now, add the Earth's rotation. The liquid surface is moving toward the pull of gravity of the Moon. But since the Earth keeps rotating, it never quite reaches that point. Due to the shift in mass the center of gravity is no longer directly between the Earth and Moon, it is slightly off. Not a lot, but just a bit. The Moon continues to orbit, but the gravity center being moved causes the Moon to change direction ever so slightly and causes the orbit to get wider. Just a few centimeters a year, but the change in course results in the Moon pulling away from the Earth. Now, as the Moon moves farther away the tidal force decreases and the angle of the offset also decreases due to the distance, reducing the rate at which the Moon moves away. Eventually it will reach equilibrium.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 10:23 GMT picturethis
Sounds like a fairly volatile place to be at the time..
Land -vs- Sea
I am imagining 1000 ft. tides every 18 hours washing inland and colliding with volcanoes / lava and the resulting vapors getting put into the atmosphere each time.
Also with that kind of tidal action, there must have a significant portion of sea beds that got exposed to atmosphere at the same time.
Wow, this would be something to witness (not personally of course).
I wonder if some boffin somewhere has put together a video simulation of what the earth would actually look like - it might be kind of cool to watch.
BTW - why are the Earth's oceans salty? - Where the heck did all of the salt come from?
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 12:16 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Sounds like a fairly volatile place to be at the time..
Erosion.
Wrong.
The sea is salty because the Flying Spaghetti Monster used them to boil his pasta, back when the earth was still hot enough to do that. He (she/it) then used the Moon as a collander to strain the pasta, which is why the moon has all those craters and holes in it. Which have since been occupied by Clangers of course.
History does not record what sauce the great FSM had with this pasta. But I'm sure it would be a boon to any potential space exploration if we could find a carbonara planet.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 12:25 GMT I ain't Spartacus
But surely getting into bed couteracts this effect? So as long as you equalise the number of times you climb into and out of bed in your lifetime, everything should be fine.
This also applies to the number of times you fall on the floor while drunk. Again there shouldn't be a problem equalising this with the number of times you get up again, but I think that means you need to stand up, and not just crawl into bed, after hitting the floor.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 11:41 GMT heyrick
Uh huh...
I've been reading this in the totally logical and accurate British press. The ones screaming about a 25 hour day (as if it's something the EU is going to foist on them next year).
Nice to see science reporting is concentrating more on the days being longer, rather than that they were once shorter.
<facepalm>
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 12:28 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Uh huh...
25 hours isn't enough. I think my ideal day would be to get up at 7am, go to bed at 2am and still get about 7 hours of sleep. So I'd personally prefer a 26 hour day.
The problem is that by the time the Earth / Moon system achieves that happy state, I'll probably be so old that I'm dozing in the armchair all day in front of Cash in the Attic and then only getting 3 hours sleep a night.
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Sunday 17th June 2018 11:52 GMT Clarecats
Re: Burn the heretic!
"....and the amount of solar radiation received on Earth also changes affecting the climate."
I thought it was heresy, punishable by death by a thousand cuts from the pseudo-scientific Twitterati, to even suggest that solar radiation could affect climate in any way.
Solar radiation is where the energy derives from; what matters is how much of it is absorbed and how much is reflected.
For instance, white ice has high albedo, reflecting nicely. Sooty black ice due to coal fire smoke absorbs rather more energy, so it melts.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 13:37 GMT Lusty
Well it's lucky then
Lucky that no lunatics are trying to suck more energy out of this system through things like tidal power stations*. Carbon emmissions are an issue, but the long term effects of tidal (and therefore gravity) power could be very terrible indeed.
Yes, I know there are people doing this. I've been warning them for years that tidal power is anything but renewable. Did they listen? They never do until it's too late :(
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Friday 8th June 2018 14:28 GMT Lusty
Re: entropy will win
"Tidal power is in the timeframe of years, and by that timeframe, tidal power is renewable"
Not as much as you'd think. The energy consumption of the planet is similar to that available from the moon, so we could easily disrupt this system within a year if we aren't careful.
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 18:02 GMT Winter is Coming!
With less gravity from the moon has Time itself changed?
With the moon further away has Time itself changed on earth? Certainly the amount would be pretty small, but would that reduced gravity change Time when on earth? If so, then over 1.4 billion years how would that play into this model? Is Time faster than before with longer days?
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Wednesday 6th June 2018 22:02 GMT Celeste Reinard
One more thing...
1: Now I wonder what the numbers would be if the earth wouldn't be spherical but, say, donut shaped (one of my favorites), or for some of ... not us ... pizza shaped.
2: So if we build a time machine, it would take only a 747 and a flight time from the UK to Ausralia to get there... that would open up real possibilities for tourism. Anyone called Elon yet?
3: There is no mention in the bible of the moon being very big, 6000 years ago... Anyone in for a theological debate, or do we skip that one being too time consuming, and we might loose sight of the moon altogether before we reach a (any) conclusion?
(comments below...)
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Thursday 7th June 2018 07:15 GMT Fermer
Tides and spills The result of the rotation of the earth and the water.
Tides is the result of the rotation of the Earth and whirlpools.
The opening was published in the Russian-German scientific peer-reviewed journal "Eastern European Scientific Journal" No. 3/2015. 64. June
http://www.auris-archiv.de/journal.html
A positive review was also received from the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Forum SPbSU Faculty of Geography.
http://www.spbgu.ru/forums/index.php?showtopic=53992
There is a rigorous regularity; tides are formed not along the entire coast of the seas and oceans, but only on those shores where the high angular velocity of the currents. And the higher the velocity of currents, the higher the amplitude of the tidal wave. On the rectilinear banks, where the currents do not have angular velocity, tides and ebbs do not form.
The waters of lakes, seas and oceans of the northern hemisphere rotate counterclockwise, and the waters of the southern hemisphere rotate by the hour hand, forming giant whirlpools.
As is known, everything that rotates, including whirlpools, possess the property of a gyro (yule) to maintain the vertical position of the axis in space, regardless of the rotation of the Earth.
If you look at the Earth from the Sun, the whirlpools, rotating together with the Earth, turn over twice a day, due to which the whirlpools precess (swing by 1-2 degrees) and reflect the tidal wave around the entire perimeter of the whirlpool.
http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/9804/7837959.21/0_f6015_1eb816e5_orig
The waters of the White Sea rotate counter-clockwise, forming a huge whirlpool-gyroscope, which, precessing, reflects a tidal wave along the entire perimeter of the White Sea.
A similar pattern of tides is observed in all lakes, seas and oceanas.
http://tapemark.narod.ru/more/22.png
The waters of the Mediterranean Sea rotate counter-clockwise, forming tides 10-15 cm high. But in Gabes Bay, off the coast of Tunisia, the tides can reach three meters, and sometimes even more, and this is considered one of the mysteries of nature. But at the same time, in the Gulf of Gabes the whirlpool turns, precessing the reflecting additional tidal wave.
A tidal wave in the Amazon River creates a huge planetary maelstrom a few thousand kilometers in diameter, rotating between South America and North Africa, embracing the mouth of the Amazon River.
The scheme of motion of a tidal wave, along the perimeter of the North Atlantic planetary maelstrom.
https://youtu.be/ZEhm_ONTQKc
The length of the tidal wave depends on the diameter of the whirlpool. And the height of the tidal wave depends on the rotation speed of the whirlpool of the orbital velocity of the Earth, and the time of the tilting of the whirlpool (12 hours).
A = V1 • V2 / t
where: A is the amplitude of the tidal wave (precession angle).
V1 - rotation speed of the whirlpool.
V2 is the orbital velocity of the Earth.
t - the time of tilting of the whirlpool (12 hours).
The vortex theory of tides can be easily verified by the connection between the height of the tidal wave and the rotation speed of the whirlpools. The height of the tidal wave can be determined by the location of the whirlpools. Drawing on a map of the depths and currents of the seas and oceans.
Continuation: Forum NIYA MEPhI. The theme of "Tides is the result of the rotation of the Earth and whirlpools."
https://mephi.ru/communication/forum/talk/forum13/topic5498/messages/
Comments: University of Cambridge Forum
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=73127.0
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Thursday 7th June 2018 12:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
I took a vacation where I dumped any form chronological limitation...
...and the results were interesting. I went to bed when I felt sleepy, woke up without alarms, and so forth.
After one week, I was sleeping 10 hours and spending 18 hours awaken. I was living at a SLOWER pace. And it felt WONDERFUL.
(Considering I had just left a 12-hour rotation shift, this was no problem to just let go...)
The bad part was having breakfast at 4pm and having lunch at three in the morning, cooking at home, because no restaurant would serve those things at those hours. Or having to plan ahead to get any decent supermarket open at "human" hours, like going shopping at 8AM and then going to bed.
Remember, having no bearing on Earth's rotation would mean that my habits would shift constantly, and it would eventually synchronize again with 9-to-5 humans.
So call me when Earth reaches a 28 hours period rotation.
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Thursday 7th June 2018 19:35 GMT jake
Re: I took a vacation where I dumped any form chronological limitation...
When I'm at home here on the ranch, I never set any alarms & indeed rarely pay any attention to clocks. I go to bed when I'm tired[0] (usually around 2am) and wake at 6am for the 6:30 milking. I often take a one hour nap after lunch (somewhere between noon and 2), but not always. I've been on this schedule for years, with no ill effects ... other than people thinking I'm weird.
[0] Sleepy tired, not physically tired. The two are NOT the same!
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