The Three Gorges Dam, located on the Yangtze River in Hubei Province, China, is the world’s largest hydroelectric project.
Completed in 2012
Built over nearly two decades, the dam was completed in 2012 and spans 2,335 meters (7,660 feet) in length, standing 185 meters (607 feet) high.
This monumental structure has sparked debate over whether its massive water reservoir could slow the Earth's rotation, according to Ziare.
The theory behind this idea relates to a phenomenon known as the "moment of inertia," which explains how the distribution of mass affects an object's rotational speed.
Similar to how a figure skater spins faster by pulling their arms inward, shifts in Earth's mass could alter its rotation.
Potentially Shifting Earth's Axis
NASA researchers have suggested that, when full, the Three Gorges Dam could hold up to 40,000 billion liters of water, potentially shifting Earth's axis by 2 centimeters (0.79 inches) and increasing the length of a day by 0.06 microseconds.
While this change is minute and unnoticeable in daily life, the dam's potential impact underscores the broader ways in which human activity affects the planet.
Environmentalists have raised concerns not only about the dam’s effect on Earth’s rotation but also its local impacts—displacing over 1.3 million people and disrupting wildlife habitats.
Climate change is another factor influencing Earth's spin. As polar ice melts and sea levels rise, mass redistributes across the planet, much like the effect of the dam.
