Does The Earth Slow Down And Why

Earth is constantly rotating on its axis turning daylight into night, and night into daylight.

Large wooden carousel rotated at a speed of about 21 km / h, while the Earth rotates on its axis at a speed that on the equator is 1670 km/h.

Will the earth ever stop rotating completely? Fact is, at this rate it will take 1.9-2.0 trillion years to Earth stop spinning.

Earth and the other planets are formed from clouds of gas and dust that revolved in space (direction and speed of rotation of the planet depended on the collision that suffered in the early years of the solar system).

Did it always have the same rotation?

Earth is already in their formation rotated, the speed of rotation has always been changeable. At the very beginning it was incredibly fast small planet, which is rotated at dizzying speed of about 6400 km / h – which is why the day lasted about 6 hours. However, the rotation of the Earth over the centuries slowed.

One of the major causes of the reduction rate was the raising and lowering of the Earth’s large oceans. Splash of ocean tides on the planet act as brakes on car. Since tides most creates the gravitational attraction of the moon, it could be said that the rotation of the Earth slows down mainly because our planet has a great moon.

What Causes Earth’s Rotation to Slow Down

Earth slows down for one to three milliseconds per day. Thus, for every 100 year day is prolonged from 36.5 seconds to about 2 minutes almost. For the next 4000 years this slowdown will extend every day for an hour.

In addition to the tides, which is managed by the moon, and other phenomena affect the rotation of the Earth. For example, people are by building of dams and placing much of the fresh water on Earth in huge dams slow down the earth for a few milliseconds. Oceans streams and large moving masses of warm and cold air also affect the speed of rotation.

A typical hurricane temporarily slightly slows the Earth, extending the day for about two microseconds. El Nino, a warm stream of air in the Pacific Ocean that real disorder in the weather, also slows the Earth. According to scientists from NASA, when the El Nino had peaked, causing extension of days of about 0.6 milliseconds.

International Service for the Earth’s rotation (International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, abbreviated IERS) follows the changes in speed of the planet. IERS decides whether we should add additional second to remain clocks in accordance with the irresolute Earth.