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by zdragnar
768 days ago
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The length of a day, at least, is unrelated. There was a big splash in the news not long ago because it was determined that the length of Earth's day was changing and we might need to change it by a second. Venus has a much, much slower rotation on its axis, but Mars is almost the same. |
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Even before we invented precise enough clocks that there was any need for leap seconds, we knew that Earth’s rotation is slowing down due to tidal drag – the moon is literally robbing angular momentum from Earth, and getting farther from Earth in the process. Back in the Cambrian, day length was around 21 hours. Shortly after the formation of the moon, 4.5Ga ago, it would have been only around five hours, assuming the giant impact hypothesis is correct.