25hr day

[Baron von Richthofen (Vaclav)]

Did the earth ever have a 25hr day?

[multiweb (Marc)]

Not sure but I know it had a 18h day at some stage. When the moon was 15x closer too, it used to create earth quakes pulling on the crust and the tides used to be miles high washing up the whole surface? So says Foxtel.

[Waxing_Gibbous (Peter)]

Not yet.
The earth's rotation is slowing by some miniscule rate, so eventually, we will.

[Allan_L (Allan)]

Originally Posted by Baron von Richthofen

Did the earth ever have a 25hr day?

Do you mean other than every year at the end of Daylight Saving

[Ian Robinson]

No.

Billions of years ago , and in more recent geological times , the earth's day was shorter.

Even when the moon was much closer to the earth the day was shorter.

[ngcles]

Hi Vaclav,

The length of the day is very, very, very slowly becoming longer and one day (assuming no outside forces act) it will end up at 25 hrs -- and longer. There are several forces, some of which effectively act in opposite directions that change the Earth's rotation period over extremely long time scales.

There is a Wiki article here that explains the guts of what has happened and why here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_acceleration

Hope that helps.


Best,

Les D