Is it possible to slow down the rotation of the Earth? It turns out that engineers from China also had a hand in this. But they didn’t do it of their own free will, it just happened that way.
More water and electricity
On the territory of China, the Three Gorges dam began its work not so long ago. Georges Dam construction took 22 years and finally launched in 2016. The idea belongs to the Chinese politician Sun Yat-sen, who proposed such a structure back in 1919. It all started in XXI century to make this huge idea come to reality. China had to spend more than 30 Billion USD for that.
The Three Gorges Dam is the largest structure on the planet
Nowadays, this Chinese dam is the biggest and the most powerful water dam in the world. So far as we know, there are no more structures of this magnitude that man could build on Earth. Moreover, due to the “Three Gorges” dam, problems of nature itself started.
The dam is a gravity power plant, it was built on the Yangtze River. The facility provides almost all residents of the state with electricity. In just one year, the plant produced almost 99 billion kWh. This is a real-world record. The dam has a solid concrete wall, the weight of which is 65.5 million tons. To fill the dam’s reservoir with water, 1.3 million people had to relocate. Don’t forget that, when providing electric current to the residents, the “Three Gorges” water dam saves people around the Yangtze River from serious floods. The dam has a positive effect on shipping and local cargo turnover, which has grown 10 times. As always, you cannot get something for nothing, the dam had its cost.
Consequences of the Three Georges Dam for the whole planet
Upstream, all the lands are flooded thanks to a giant dam. The natural serializability of the land is greatly reduced. A lot of archaeological sites were flooded, and the threat of the formation of such a problem as landslides has become many times higher, and animals with birds, and fish suffer. If this dam bursts, 360 million people could die. Environmentalists see the dam as a great threat, China’s waters are already polluted by almost 70%, and the dam will only worsen this indicator.
A giant dam holds trillions of liters of water and slows down the rotation of the Earth.
However, these are all China’s problems, and the environmental problems caused by the Three Gorges base affect the entire planet. With its massive concrete walls, the Three Georges Dam holds about 450 billion cubic meters of water. In comparison, when compared to the total weight of the Earth, not much. But this amount was enough to slightly alter the planet’s natural rotation due to a slight change in mass acting on the Earth.It’s simple physics, nothing more. The water level of the river has risen by 100m. All of this water mass eventually moved away from the Earth’s axis of rotation, slowing the rotation of the entire Earth. In other words, the length of the day has increased by 60 nanoseconds. Yes, not so much, but still.
To add more spice, the Georges dam influenced more issues along with it. The whole weight of the raised water led to the displacement of the south and north poles. Let it be only 2 cm, but it is already noticeable.
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