Huge Chinese construction project is so large it is lengthening our day
The enormous construction project has had a surprising effect on the Earth
If you ever feel you don't have enough time in the day, you are not alone. Between washing up after kids, working long hours, and making time for hobbies and past-times, it might seem time is constantly running away with you.
But what if the day was made longer, even if just by a few microseconds? Well, it turns out a huge man-made project in China is so large that it is affecting the Earth's rotation - and increasing the 24 hours we have to play with.
Construction on China's Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric power station, began in 1994 and was completed over nine years with a price tag of around £29billion. It has since had a surprising effect on the Earth.
The colossal structure is situated in Hubei province and spans the Yangtze River, which is the longest river in Eurasia. Towering at 181 metres tall and stretching 2,335 metres across, the dam can hold a mind-boggling 27.2million cubic metres of water and boasts a maximum capacity of 22,500 megawatts.
At peak performance, it has the potential to supply electricity to 5.4million homes for a month, utilising the immense water flow from the neighbouring gorges Qutangxia, Wuxia, and Xilingxia.
It was the devastating Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami in 2004 that first prompted NASA scientists to explore whether such seismic events could influence the Earth's rotation due to mass redistribution.
According to IFL Science, the concept of the 'Moment of Inertia' in physics refers to how mass distribution on Earth can slightly impact how hard it is to spin the planet on its axis.
The tectonic activity during an earthquake, particularly the one in 2004, caused a shift in the Earth's mass distribution, leading to a decrease in the length of a day by 2.68 microseconds.
In a 2005 post, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center geophysicist Dr Benjamin Fong Chao explained that the massive amount of water displaced to fill the Three Gorges Dam could have a similar effect.
He determined that this mass shift would extend the length of a day by 0.06 microseconds and alter Earth's pole position by approximately two centimetres.
While this effect may prove inconsequential to our daily lives, it could cause confusion for highly precise time-keeping devices like atomic clocks.
This issue has prompted some scientists to suggest that we may need to account for a negative leap second – such as a minute with only 59 seconds – within the next ten years.
"For reference, this amounts to a bit more than three days over the entire age of the universe," Dr Chao explained. "Any time you shift mass around, you change the Earth's rotation. The effect is very small, but measurable."
During the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, a total of 1.3million people were relocated as their towns and villages became submerged.
The dam, besides generating electricity, is designed to enhance the Yangtze River's shipping capacity and decrease the risk of downstream floods by providing flood storage space.
The government views the project as a historic achievement in engineering, social, and economic terms, featuring state-of-the-art large turbines and a commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The dam's construction has not been without controversy - valuable archaeological and cultural sites were flooded. Other critics argue that the dam has significantly impacted the environment and increased the risk of landslides.
The project utilised 27.2million cubic metres of concrete, a whopping 463,000 tonnes of steel (equivalent to constructing 63 Eiffel Towers) and shifted approximately 102.6million cubic metres of Earth.
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