As mass moves away from the axis of rotation, physical inertia increases and the initially fast rotation becomes slower. There are 86,400 seconds in any 24-hour rotation, a figure governed by the ...

But there’s a lesser-known twist: it might be subtly tweaking Earth’s rotation. According to NASA ... and something called moment of inertia. It got attention after NASA published a study ...

The latter is anticipated to change the moment of inertia for Earth by a small amount due to rotational dynamics, a term which describes the distribution of mass with respect to the axis of rotation.

2. Moment Shift The Three Gorges Dam alters Earth’s “moment of inertia”—its resistance to spinning—by concentrating massive weight far from the center of rotation. Like adding weight to ...