New Research on Earth's Rotation Slowdown and Its Significance
TapTechNews August 13th news, on August 7th, Chengdu University of Technology released a blog post stating that Professor Ma Chao from its Institute of Sedimentary Geology led the big data sedimentation team to combine geological records and astronomical calculations to reconstruct for the first time the process of the Earth's rotation slowing down from 700 million to 200 million years ago in geological records.
The relevant achievement paper is titled 'Geological evidence reveals a staircase pattern in Earth's rotational deceleration evolution' and was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on August 6th.
Team Introduction
The team is under the guidance of Academician Wang Chengshan. The first author of the paper is Researcher Huang He, and the corresponding author is Professor Ma Chao. Other authors include Professor Hou Mingcai, Associate Professor Zhong Hanting, and Professor Gao Yuan from China University of Geosciences (Beijing).
Research Basis
Under the joint funding of the Basic Science Center Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China 'Continental evolution and monsoon system evolution' (42488201) and the general project 'study on the basic parameters of the solar system planetary orbits and the Earth's orbital cycle under the constraint of deep-time sedimentary records' (42172137), in cooperation with relevant team members from the Paris Observatory in France, the Leibniz Institute of Applied Geophysics in Germany, Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and China University of Geosciences (Beijing), an interdisciplinary study of astronomy and geology was carried out. Combined with geological records and astronomical theoretical calculations, the stepped evolution process of the Earth's rotation deceleration from 700 million to 200 million years ago was reconstructed.
Paper Introduction:
The research team, in conjunction with the French astronomer Jacques Laskar's team and geologists from Germany and Ireland, conducted in-depth analysis and calculations on global geological records and obtained the Earth's rotation period, the length of the Earth's day, and the distance between the Earth and the Moon from 700 million to 200 million years ago.
The results show that from 700 million to 200 million years ago, the distance between the Earth and the Moon increased by about 12,427 miles (about 20,000 kilometers), and the day length increased by about 2.2 hours.
Two 'fast-slow' transitions occurred at 550 million years ago and 250 million years ago, which exactly corresponded to the Cambrian explosion of life and the largest mass extinction event in the Earth's history. These two main 'fast-slow' deceleration periods may have provided the necessary conditions for the evolution of the early marine ecosystem.
In addition, this study shows that supercontinent aggregation and glacial development in geological history will also affect the Earth's rotation rate, but through numerical calculation, the reason for the stagnation of the Earth's rotation deceleration from 500 million to 350 million years ago is mainly attributed to the weakened tidal dissipation caused by the continental-oceanic structure at that time, rather than the change in the Earth's dynamic ellipsoid due to supercontinent aggregation or glacial action.
Project Significance
Ma Chao said:
This research has important theoretical significance for reconstructing the evolutionary history of the Earth-Moon system and exploring the Earth's rotation deceleration in terms of climate, environment, and biological evolution.
On this basis, the research team will further explore the intrinsic connection between the Earth's rotation changes and natural phenomena such as the Earth's magnetic field, tidal action, and climate change, in order to build a more comprehensive and accurate Earth system evolution model.
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