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Artist's depiction of a collision between two planetary bodies. Such an impact between Earth and a Mars-sized object likely formed the Moon.. The giant-impact hypothesis, sometimes called the Theia Impact, is an astrogeology hypothesis for the formation of the Moon first proposed in 1946 by Canadian geologist Reginald Daly.
Earth's rotation axis moves with respect to the fixed stars (inertial space); the components of this motion are precession and nutation. It also moves with respect to Earth's crust; this is called polar motion. Precession is a rotation of Earth's rotation axis, caused primarily by external torques from the gravity of the Sun, Moon and other bodies.
Originally formulated by two independent research groups in 1976, the giant impact model supposed that a massive planetary object the size of Mars had collided with Earth early in its history. The impact would have melted Earth's crust, and the other planet's heavy core would have sunk inward and merged with Earth's.
We know Earth’s rotation on a cosmic scale, but seeing it close up requires quantum mechanics. Interferometry is the use of light waves, sound, etc., to identify changes in matter or motion.
Precession means the Earth's nonuniform motion (see above) will affect different seasons. Winter, for instance, will be in a different section of the orbit. When the Earth's apsides (extremes of distance from the sun) are aligned with the equinoxes, the length of spring and summer combined will equal that of autumn and winter.
The Chandler wobble or Chandler variation of latitude is a small deviation in the Earth's axis of rotation relative to the solid earth, [1] which was discovered by and named after American astronomer Seth Carlo Chandler in 1891. It amounts to change of about 9 metres (30 ft) in the point at which the axis intersects the Earth's surface and has ...
“Regarding the impact on life, as mentioned in the paper’s introduction, inner core growth plays a crucial role in generating Earth’s magnetic field, which protects us from harmful solar ...
Ice loss due to climate change has slightly slowed the Earth’s spin, a new study shows — and it could affect how we measure time. Global warming has slightly slowed Earth's rotation — and it ...