The Moon keeps drifting away from Earth. Will it ever leave?
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- A new study looks at rock layers in an Australian park to estimate the Moon was 60,000km closer to Earth 2.5 billion years ago.
- The Moon is drifting away from Earth at the current rate of 3.8 cm per year.
- The geoscientists utilized Milankovitch Cycles for their research.
The Moon is one of the constants you can expect when living on Earth – it always seems to be there, lighting up our nights, and affecting our tides and calendars. But like everything in the universe, even our relationship with the Moon is slowly changing. It is actually drifting away from Earth, at the rate of about 3.8 cm (1.50 in) a year. And a unique new study, which examined the ancient layers of rocks on our own planet, recently found out just how much closer the Moon was 2.5 billion years ago and what the future might hold.
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