{"id":1828,"date":"2025-02-15T09:15:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-15T06:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/?p=1828"},"modified":"2025-11-20T12:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:38:09","slug":"the-moons-gravity-caused-periods-of-rapid-development-of-life-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/2025\/02\/15\/the-moons-gravity-caused-periods-of-rapid-development-of-life-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moon’s gravity caused periods of rapid development of life on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers have found that Earth’s days once became longer by more than two hours because the moon shifted thousands of miles in its orbit over two periods. The extra hours of sunlight, in turn, may have led to oxygenation, which marked a period of rapid development of life on Earth, the researchers say.<\/span><\/p>\n

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“Changes in day length can affect solar energy distribution and temperature gradients, potentially influencing weather systems and atmospheric dynamics,” the researchers write in a new study published August 6, 2024, in the journal PNAS.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Moon currently orbits at an average distance of 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) from Earth. But our satellite wasn’t always where it is now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earth’s day is currently about 24 hours long, but it wasn’t always that way. Over time, the moon pulls on our planet. As it does, it moves away from Earth, taking away kinetic energy. As a result, our planet’s rotation on its axis slows down, lengthening Earth’s day, according to the study.<\/span><\/p>\n

Modeling changes in the way Earth wobbles as it rotates can give a rough picture of this slowdown in the planet’s history. But this estimate is clearly flawed, as it leads to the prediction that Earth and the moon would have collided about 1.5 billion years ago, the study’s authors noted.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In a new study, a team led by geologist He Huang of the Chengdu University of Technology in China sought to shed light on the history of Earth\u2019s rotation by examining eight data sets that captured layers of rock from marine environments dating back roughly 700 million to 200 million years. These tidalites, as they\u2019re called, can record the strength of tides over time, in part because they reveal the thickness of the ocean. The team combined these data sets with models of the tidal forces acting between the moon and Earth to map how quickly Earth rotated on its axis over the half-billion-year period studied.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers found that the Earth’s rotation had a “ladder” pattern, with two periods when the planet’s rotation changed rapidly and dramatically, followed by periods of stability. Days became 2.2 hours longer during the study period. The Moon also moved an average of 12,000 miles (20,000 km) further away during this period.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of these time periods, from about 650 to 500 million years ago, coincided with the Cambrian explosion, a period when life dramatically diversified and spread into new niches. The second \u201cstep\u201d in Earth\u2019s rotation occurred from about 340 to 280 million years ago, corresponding to a period when huge glaciers covered the planet.<\/span><\/p>\n

The study suggests that by increasing day length \u2014 and therefore solar exposure \u2014 the Moon may have triggered major oxygenation events that led to the diversification of life. However, these results \u201cneed to be interpreted with caution,\u201d the authors write in the study.<\/span><\/p>\n

The study also casts doubt on another theory: that the period when glaciers rapidly covered the Earth, leading to mass extinctions, had a major impact on the Earth’s rotation. Rather, much of the slowdown is caused directly by tidal forces, they suggested.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers have found that Earth’s days once became longer by more than two hours because the moon shifted thousands of miles in its orbit over two periods. The extra hours of sunlight, in turn, may have led to oxygenation, which marked a period of rapid development of life on Earth, the researchers say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,536,535,541,40],"tags":[862,293,863,677],"class_list":{"0":"post-1828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-fauna","9":"category-flora","10":"category-moon","11":"category-kosmos","12":"tag-length-of-day","13":"tag-moon","14":"tag-origin-of-life","15":"tag-sun"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1830,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions\/1830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}