To organize the stones accurately, they can only check their position once every 18.5 years, on the next lunar standstill. It seems to be something complicated, why do they do it ......? in the ancient world, people worshiped the moon and made stories of the mysterious power of glowing spheres emerging in the night sky. Some stories have passed the selection time, let's just say the classic movie about werewolf, all about the strange and frightening power of the moon.
A coral species called Diploria strigosa (Brain Coral) is also one of the proofs that the moon affects the life on earth, every 26 days at full moon time, this coral reef forms a new skeleton layer over the old layer. This growth spurt is influenced by the moon's orbit, and the skeletal layer can be used as a lunar calendar, like a recording of a walking time.
But other coral reef species show even more, allowing us to look beyond the past and uncover something extraordinary about the strength of the moon. Below is a photo of a coral reef fossil from the "Devonian Era", which is about 400 million years old. As the monthly layers are formed, there is also an annual layer that is formed, there are even layers formed daily.
And if we calculate to determine the daily layer is formed in 1 year, we will find not 365 days, but in this coral there are 400 layers every year, 400 days in 1 year, so in other words there are additional 35 more days in each year. If there really are 400 days in 1 year in that era, how long each day ..? If we do the calculations, and add up the total number of hours in a year then divide 400 days then we will find that in the Devonian Era, when the fossil is still alive, 1 day in that same era lasts for 21 hours 55 minutes. Very strange is not it, the fact that in 1 day in that era is not 24 hours like today.
Devonian Era
We know that the length of 1 day is determined by the time it takes the earth to spin once, from the rising sun to the next. If in the past the days were shorter, the earth would have rotated faster. In fact, in the past, billions of years ago, the earth spun so quickly that 1 day only lasted for 5 hours only. But why does the Earth's rotational speed keep changing every time? This is caused by the moon. When the moon has just formed, the distance is very close to the earth, and its gravity is very strong, it also serves as a "brake" for the earth. Rotation motion opposite to the moon causes the earth's rotation to slow down. For billions of years, the gravitational force of the moon became a "brake" on the spin of the earth, and the days on earth became longer, what was once only 5 hours now becomes 24 hours.
It's amazing to see that every rhythm of our planet is set by the closest space object to us. But what about the moon itself? How is the moon affected by the spin of the earth ..? One thing we can learn in physics is, when there is action then there is always a reaction. As the spin of the earth progresses slowly as it is today, there is something that smakin quickly, and it is the moon. For billions of years, the sooner, and what happens if something in orbit becomes ever faster?....
The moon is further away from the earth's orbit, as it forms a spiral path that is getting wider, but is the moon still far away today? Or has it stopped ?. In addition to playing on the moon, apollo astronauts also perform a series of experiments and on their third mission they leave a device called "retro-reflector units", encased in small mirrors.
and since then, astronomers have been firing laser into the device periodically, to keep track of exactly how far the moon is. Astronomers have been using lasers to measure the distance of the moon for 40 years, and what they find among the laser particles is clear, the moon that has been moving away for billions of years is still moving away at 3.78 cm a year, on a human scale, it is the same with the growing speed of nails on our fingers.
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