NASA: Days to Get Longer Because “Moon” Moves Away from Earth

Scientists of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have made an "exciting" discovery about the moon.

 They confirm that the moon is gradually moving away from the Earth, in terms of distance, which affects the "length of days" on our planet.

Scientists assumed that the moon remained at a fixed distance from Earth due to the force of gravity, but today, scientists no longer believe that this distance is actually fixed.

A new study conducted by researchers found that the moon was much closer to Earth, hundreds of years ago, and they also discovered that the closer the moon is to Earth, the shorter the days on Earth.

At one point, scientists believe, a day on Earth 1.4 billion years ago was only 18 hours long. This is much shorter compared to the 24 hours we are used to in the 21st century.

"One of our ambitions was to use astronomy to tell the time in the distant past, to develop very old geological time scales," says Professor Stephen Myers, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Professor Myers, the co-author of the study, worked with his team to look at Earth's past and recreate what it is believed the solar system once looked like.

According to the results, the Moon is currently moving away from the Earth at a rate of 3.82 cm each year. Thus, as the moon drifts away, its influence on the planet's spin around its axis is waning, thereby making days last longer.