Length of an earth day is getting longer every year, says study

• The length of a day on earth is increasing slowly but gradually.
  
• A new study shows eventually our days will be longer than 24 hours.
  
• Study also shows that moon moves approximately 1.5 inches away from us each year.
  

Have you ever felt that if you had just a little more time you could have gotten everything done? Well, the good news is that the days are getting longer, but the bad news is, it is happening really slowly, almost 75,000th of a second per year.

In a new study that was done by using a combination of astronomy and geochemical signature buried in ancient rocks, has shown that a day on earth approximately 1.4 billion years ago was about 18 hrs and 41 minutes long, which is 5 hours and 15 minutes less than the current day duration.

This means that, on an average, the length of the day has increased approximately by 75,000th of a second per year since the earliest part of earth’s history. And, this trend is expected to continue for millions of years more.

Speaking of cosmic events, another study has revealed that the moon moves 1.5 inches away from the earth each year.

According to Stephen Meyers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Alberto Malinverno at Columbia University in New York, the moon, over the past 1.4 billion years, has drifted about 340,000 km away from earth. This is due to the gradual slowing down of earth's rotation about its axis.

These results came in after Meyers and Malinvern took on the task of reconstructing the Milankovitch cycles. These cycles are basically the changes in the distance between earth and the moon, the shape of the earth’s orbit around the sun, plus variations or the ‘wobbles’.

“We were interested in reconstructing the Milankovitch cycles because they provide a powerful tool for evaluating the history of our planet, and the solar system. They are like signposts on a trail, allowing us to navigate geological history. The identification of these cycles in ancient sediments has revolutionised our understanding of the nature of ice ages, the instability of ice sheets, and how Earth’s climate system works,” said Meyers to the The Guardian.

And here’s an interesting point - the further the moon drifts off from earth, there will come a point when it will be visible by only one half of our planet and not the other.