00:07Earth's rotation is slowing down. Every single day is very slightly longer than the day before it.
00:13The change is tiny but it is real. It is measurable and over long enough time scales
00:18it changes everything about how life on this planet works. Let's start with how we know this.
00:24Scientists measure Earth's rotation using atomic clocks. Devices so precise they lose less than 1 second every 100 million years.
00:33By comparing atomic clock time to the time it actually takes Earth to complete one rotation,
00:39researchers have confirmed that Earth's day is lengthening by approximately 1.7 milliseconds per century.
00:46That sounds insignificant but multiply it across hundreds of millions of years and the effect becomes enormous.
00:53400 million years ago fossil evidence from ancient corals shows that a single Earth day lasted only about 22 hours.
01:01The Earth was spinning noticeably faster. A year back then contained around 400 days rather than 365
01:09because Earth completed more rotations in the same orbital period around the Sun.
01:14The primary cause of this slowdown is the Moon. The Moon's gravity creates tidal bulges in Earth's oceans.
01:22Because Earth rotates faster than the Moon orbits, these tidal bulges sit slightly ahead of the Moon in its orbital
01:28path.
01:29The gravitational pull between the bulge and the Moon acts like a break on Earth's rotation while simultaneously pushing the
01:36Moon into a higher, slower orbit.
01:39Which is also why the Moon is drifting away from Earth at about 3.8 centimeters per year.
01:45This is not a smooth, perfectly steady process. Earthquakes can actually speed up Earth's rotation very slightly by redistributing mass
01:53closer to the planet's axis.
01:55The same principle as a figure skater pulling in their arms to spin faster.
01:59The 2011 earthquake in Japan is estimated to have shortened the day by about 1.8 microseconds.
02:06Melting ice sheets and rising sea levels also redistribute mass around the planet and influence rotation speed in ways scientists
02:14are still studying carefully.
02:17So what happens if this slowdown continues indefinitely?
02:20Over an extraordinarily long time scale, many billions of years,
02:25tidal forces would theoretically work to slow Earth's rotation until it becomes what astronomers call tidally locked to the Moon.
02:33In a tidally locked relationship, the same side of Earth would always face the Moon.
02:38Just as the same side of the Moon always faces Earth today.
02:43A day on Earth would eventually become as long as a month is today.
02:47However, this is one of those astronomical processes that operates on time scales far longer than the Sun itself has
02:54left to live.
02:56Calculations suggest the Sun will enter its red giant phase and engulf or destroy the Earth roughly 5 billion years
03:04from now,
03:04long before Earth could ever become fully tidally locked to the Moon through this gradual process alone.
03:11The slowdown is real and measurable, but the Universe has other plans for Earth's ending before tidal locking could ever
03:18be completed.
03:19Still, the practical effects of even today's slow but steady lengthening of the day are significant for modern technology.
03:27Global timekeeping systems, satellite navigation and astronomical calculations all require periodic adjustments called leap seconds to keep atomic clock time
03:38synchronized with Earth's actual rotation.
03:40Since 1972, dozens of leap seconds have been added to global timekeeping systems specifically to account for this gradual slowdown.
03:50There is something profound in recognizing that the length of a day, something so fundamental that we base our entire
03:56concept of time around it, is not a fixed eternal constant.
04:01It is a dynamic, ever so slowly shifting relationship between Earth, the Moon and the forces that bind them.
04:09The Quran addresses the precision and the dynamic nature of celestial timekeeping directly.
04:14In Surah Yunus 10, verse 5, Allah says, and I translate the meaning,
04:21It is He who made the sun a shining light and the moon a derived light, and determined for it
04:27phases, that you may know the number of years and the count of time.
04:32Allah did not create these things except in truth.
04:35The phrase determined for it phases speaks to an ordered calculated system, not a random or static one.
04:43Modern astronomy has confirmed that the relationship between Earth, the Moon and the Sun is indeed an evolving calculated system
04:52governed by precise physical laws of gravity and angular momentum, changing gradually but predictably over time, exactly as a design
05:01system would.
05:02In Surah Ar-Rahman, chapter 55, verse 5, Allah says, and I translate,
05:09The sun and the moon move by precise calculation.
05:13The Arabic word used is khusban, meaning calculation, reckoning or precise accounting.
05:20The motion of the sun and moon is described not as arbitrary, but as something following an exact calculated order.
05:27Classical commentators including Altabari and Ibn Kathir understood this verse as describing the entire celestial system, the orbits, the phases,
05:37the cycles of day and night, as operating according to fixed mathematical precision, established and maintained by the creator.
05:45The fact that modern science can now calculate Earth's rotational slowdown to a precision of milliseconds per century can predict
05:53leap seconds years in advance and can model the gravitational relationship between Earth and the moon down to fractions of
05:59a millimeter is a continuation of exactly the kind of precise calculation the Quran describes as inherent to the celestial
06:06order from the very beginning.
06:08The day is getting longer, not because anything is going wrong, but because the universe is following the same precise
06:14calculation it always has.
06:16A calculation set in motion long before any human being existed to measure it, and one that will continue long
06:22after we are gone, until the sun itself brings this chapter of creation to its end.
06:29Comment below.
06:30Did you know the length of a day on Earth is actually changing?
06:34Follow Muslim Space Agency.
06:37Share this with someone who has never thought about time this way.
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