• News
    • Tech News
    • AI
  • Gadgets
    • Apple
    • iPhone
  • Gaming
    • Playstation
    • Xbox
  • Science
    • News
    • Space
  • Streaming
    • Netflix
  • Vehicles
    • Car News
  • Social Media
    • WhatsApp
    • YouTube
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • LADbible
  • UNILAD
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
TikTok
Snapchat
WhatsApp
Submit Your Content
NASA confirm China's Three Gorges Dam could make every day longer as it makes irreversible changes to Earth

Home> News> Tech News

Published 10:24 9 Jun 2025 GMT+1

NASA confirm China's Three Gorges Dam could make every day longer as it makes irreversible changes to Earth

Good luck getting paid for that extra time at your desk

Tom Chapman

Tom Chapman

As the world continues to advance at an alarming pace, it seems that architects really are going with the idea that bigger is better.

Alongside ancient ones like the Great Wall of China, the likes of Beijing Daxing International Airport, the Burj Khalifa, and the International Space Station (even though it's not actually on Earth) are classed as some of the world's biggest megastructures.

China's Three Gorges Dam is another colossus of the building world, and while China has plans to build a giant power station the size of it in space, it's currently a jewel in the country's energy production crown.

Alongside a new dam that's three times the size of the Three Gorges Dam being approved for construction on China's Yarlung Tsangpo River, NASA is looking at what these megastructures could be doing to our planet.

Advert

The Three Gorges Dam is subtly making our days longer (CFOTO / Contributor / Getty)
The Three Gorges Dam is subtly making our days longer (CFOTO / Contributor / Getty)

Serving as the world's largest power station, the Three Gorges Dam towers 175 meters above sea level in the far west of Wuhan.

Packing a punch with a reservoir flood storage capacity of 22 km3, this has come at the cost of 13 flooded cities, 140 towns, and the displacement of over 31 million people.

Despite the Three Gorges Dam coming at a whopping cost of ¥203 billion ($31.765 billion), the fact that it can produce 0.54 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity every day and power 5.4 million households for a whole month when at full capacity means many think it's well worth it.

Advert

According to Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao, a geophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the Three Gorges Dam is having an adverse effect on the planet's rotation.

When filled with 10 trillion gallons of water, the world's largest hydroelectric dam can increase the length of a day by 0.06 microseconds.

Over on Reddit, one person fumed: "F**king corporations. They'll do anything to get me to work a little longer."

Another grumbled: "I knew my work day felt longer - f**kers"

Advert

A third said: "Bro, 24hrs was long enough."


It's all to do with the moment of inertia, which is how the distribution of mass affects a body's rotating speed. By moving around such a large amount of water, the Three Gorges has very subtly affected Earth's mass distribution, and in turn, its rotation.

Advert

For example, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami forced a massive shift in the Earth's tectonic plates and shortened the length of a day by 2.68 microseconds.

It's also said that the Three Gorges is able to make the Earth slightly flatter on the top by shifting the North and South Poles by two centimeters (0.8 inch).

Elsewhere, research from Nature's "Contributions of core, mantle and climatological processes to Earth’s polar motion" looked at 120 years of data and suggested that climate change has forced our days to get longer by 1.33 milliseconds per 100 years since 2000.

As for the Three Gorges, the fact that 0.06 microseconds works out at just over three days over the entire age of the universe, we don't have much to be worried about.

Advert

Okay, so we won't be chained to our desks for even longer as the working week gets extended by a day every year. Phew.

Featured Image Credit: NurPhoto / Contributor / Getty
Discovery
Nasa

Advert

Advert

Advert

Choose your content:

2 days ago
  • Anadolu / Contributor via Getty
    2 days ago

    Elon Musk saved Marvel millions of dollars over a decade ago 'in exchange' for one thing

    He gave them an offer they couldn't refuse

    News
  • Instagram / Billie Eilish
    2 days ago

    Billie Eilish calls out billionaires to Mark Zuckerberg's face

    Is the Meta overlord really a 'Bad Guy'?

    News
  • Tashi-Delek via Getty
    2 days ago

    Shocking benefits watching a horror movie can have on your health

    Perfect timing for Halloween

    Science
  • Leif Skoogfors / Contributor / Getty
    2 days ago

    'Cursed' American town is a real-life Silent Hill where the same fire has been burning for 63 years

    Konami's tormented town comes to life

    News
  • NASA discover planet bigger than Earth within 'habitable zone' in incredible find
  • NASA discovers ‘Super Earth’ sending mysterious message 154 light years away
  • NASA make historic discovery of violent black hole hiding 600,000,000 light years away
  • Scientists issue statement after identifying bizarre object in space firing signals at Earth every 44 minutes