Latest news with #BenjaminFongChao
India.com
02-05-2025
- Science
- India.com
NASA confirms a massive man-made project is slowing down the Earth's rotation by..., it is located in...
Even though changing the flow of time sounds like science fiction, NASA scientists say that one massive structure in China has made a tiny but measurable impact on how Earth spins. We're talking about the Three Gorges Dam—an enormous hydroelectric project built across the Yangtze River. Finished in 2012, it's the largest power station in the world when it comes to electricity generation capacity. With a width of over 2.3 kilometers and a height of 185 meters, the dam holds an astonishing 40 cubic kilometers of water—that's about 10 trillion gallons. This huge mass of water being stored at such a high elevation adds a significant amount of weight to one part of the planet. According to NASA scientist Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao from the Goddard Space Flight Center, moving such a large mass has slightly changed the way Earth rotates. It's not something humans can feel, but the shift has increased the length of a day by around 0.06 microseconds—or 0.00000006 seconds. To put it in perspective, you'd need over 16 million structures like the Three Gorges Dam to slow Earth's rotation enough to add a full second to the year. So, while it's an interesting scientific finding, it doesn't have any noticeable effect on our daily lives. Dr. Chao explains that any time you move around large amounts of mass on Earth—like water or land—it can have a slight influence on how the planet spins. These effects are very small, but they can still be measured with today's precise technology. Joking about it, some people online wondered if we could use this slow-down to get an extra long weekend or joked that 'we slowed the Earth down before GTA 6 even launched!' Despite its planetary influence, the Three Gorges Dam continues to be a cornerstone of China's clean energy efforts. It can generate 22,500 megawatts of electricity—equal to the output of about 15 nuclear power plants—and it plays a major role in reducing China's reliance on coal and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA say huge man-made structure is actually slowing down Earth's rotation
Changing the laws of time is functionally impossible, yet NASA has revealed that one gigantic man-made structure in China is so big that it might just have altered Earth's rotation. With the ever-looming Doomsday Clock ticking down, it would be nice to have a little more time every year to get things done, even if most people would spend it staring at their phone. While you might have thought that this was an impossibility, NASA have now discovered that a major landmark in China is so unbelievably huge that it's actually extended the length of the year by altering the rotation of our planet. As reported by LADbible, Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has revealed research that links the size and weight of the Three Gorges Dam in China to a change in the Earth's orbit. Completed in 2012, the Three Gorges Dam stretches across the Yangtze River near Sandouping, and is the world's largest power station when considering its installed capacity. It's also 2,335 meters wide and sits 185 meters above sea level at its peak, costing $20.4 billion in total by the end of its construction. Due to its ability to hold roughly 40 cubic kilometers - equality to around 10 trillion gallons - of water, the Three Gorges Dam provides a shift in mass that increases the length of every single day on Earth by 0.06 microseconds, making our planet more round in the middle and flatter on top in addition. Unfortunately, this extension of time isn't something that you would be able to feel in any capacity, as a single microsecond is the equivalent of 0.000001 seconds, so the amount that the Three Gorges Dam actually 'moved' time amounts to just 0.00000006 seconds. For the Earth to move enough to create a single second of additional time, you'd need the equivalent shift in mass of 16,666,666 Three Gorges Dams, although that might scale a little differently if it all occurred at once! Dr. Chao has further added that this movement "amounts to a bit more than 3 days over the entire age of the universe," so in the grand scheme of 13.8 billion years, it's not too much to worry about thankfully. "Can we just take it all at once now in the form of an extra three-day weekend?" jokes one user in a Reddit thread following the news, with another adding that we "slowed down the earth before [we got] GTA 6." It's certainly another hefty gut punch to any flat Earthers still persisting out there too, although you would have thought that clear evidence from some of the world's most knowledgable scientists would have been enough to convince them otherwise.
Daily Record
01-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Record
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. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'.
Hindustan Times
26-04-2025
- Science
- Hindustan Times
Spin cycle: Why Earth's rotational speed is changing
Talk about making the world go round. Earth's rotational speed is changing, and we're more than partly responsible. A gigantic dam, our extraction of groundwater, melting ice sheets and rising sea levels are among the human-linked factors altering Earth's spin. The thing all these factors have in common, is water. Where it stands, how it flows and where it settles has always shaped Earth's rotation. During the last Ice Age, which ended about 20,000 years ago, for instance, the weight of the ice was so great that it depressed the surface of the planet. As it melted, large parts of the planet returned to their original form, leading to shifts in the orbit then too. Giant earthquakes have also traditionally altered Earth's rotation, in tiny but still real ways. Anything that redistributes Earth's mass can cause such a change. One of the things now estimated to do this is the world's most powerful dam. China's Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze River generates more hydroelectric power than certain small countries. Completed in 2006, it is over 7,500 ft long and 600 ft tall. At capacity, it holds back (and draws power from) 10 trillion gallons of water. Because this water has been moved from a lower elevation to a higher one, at a certain distance from the equator, it has likely caused a measurable shift in the Earth's spin. According to research by Benjamin Fong Chao, a geophysicist with the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), released in 2005, the dam has likely increased the length of a day by 0.06 microseconds (for context, there are a million microseconds in a second). Incidentally, other dams have been said to cause infinitesimal shifts in spin too; few have been studied as closely as the Three Gorges. Elsewhere, 'contemporary mass loss' and its impact on Earth's rotation are being studied on two primary fronts: the cracking and collapsing of ice sheets at the poles, and the extraction of massive volumes of groundwater over time. Through the 20th century, the Greenland ice sheet (the largest ice mass in the northern hemisphere) has had an estimated 7,500 billion tonnes of ice melt into the ocean. The rate of melting has since sped up. NASA estimates that about 270 billion tonnes are now being lost a year in Greenland, and another 135 billion tonnes are being lost in Antarctica. Meanwhile, humans pumped out more than 2,100 billion tonnes of groundwater between 1993 and 2010 alone, according to a study by Korean geophysicist Ki-Weon Seo, published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2023. Most of it eventually ended up in the sea. This shifting of mass directly affects Earth's rotation too. The direct implications of such shifts are felt in areas that rely on extreme precision, such as satellite orbits, GPS accuracy and the synchronisation of atomic clocks. The impacts of the factors causing the shifts, of course, are a matter of survival.
