China responded to worrying satellite image of man-made project NASA said is slowing down the Earth's rotation
China responded to claims that satellite images showed problems with the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest power station.
This is the place NASA said is actually having a slight impact on the speed at which our planet rotates, and by slowing us down a little bit it has managed to extend the length of a day on Earth by an imperceptible amount.
Over a million people were moved on from their homes and around 140 towns were flooded to create this man-made landmark, so it would be a shame for everyone impacted by its construction if it turned out not to work or to have some kind of catastrophic flaw developing.
That was the accusation levelled at the dam by a bunch of people on the internet a few years back, and the debate got so big that officials from China waded into the discussion to defend their goliath of a dam.
Advert
What is the Three Gorges Dam?
Going online in 2012, the Three Gorges Dam spans the Yangtze River in China and is the world's largest power station.
It's 2,335 metres long and 185 metres tall, generating on average 98.8 terawatt hours per year.
For comparison, in 2023 the UK consumed 262.9 terawatt hours, 92.6 of which came from domestic consumption so with something like this you could power just about every home in Britain.
All the businesses and places of work would still need somewhere to get their electricity from, though.
The dam is not without controversy, as building it displaced over a million people.
How does it slow down Earth?
NASA has explained that the world's largest ever hydroelectric power station is slowing down our planet's rotation and has made our day 0.06 microseconds longer.
That may not sound like a lot, and it really isn't since over the span of an average 80-year life it'd only get you 1.75200 milliseconds more daytime.
This works because the sheer amount of water the dam holds shifts the mass of the planet and thus slows down the Earth's rotation by a teeny tiny amount.
Three Gorges can hold 39.3 billion cubic metres of water, and that's why it contains forces so powerful that they can actually slightly interfere with the rotation of our planet.
What are the images?
The dam was criticised a few years ago after social media users started sharing satellite images of the Three Gorges Dam which appeared to show it looking a bit crooked.
The users sharing the images said they were worried that the dam could crack and break, which would be a disaster for anyone in the vicinity as a huge amount of water and broken concrete would be unleashed down the Yangtze.
The images were taken from Google Maps and compared with aerial photos of the dam from the previous decade in an attempt to claim that the satellite images showed how the structure had become warped over time, with the implication that further warping would prove fatal for Three Gorges.
China's response
Chinese officials were quick to hit back at claims the dam was in poor condition.
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation released their own satellite photos of the Three Gorges Dam and said there were 'no problems at all' with the hydroelectric plant.
According to YouTubers Megabuilds, officials said that the appearance of the dam was the 'result of algorithm errors in Google Maps' and that the dam does move a bit given the forces it's subjected to, but nowhere near as much as some people were claiming.
Given that the dam is still standing and operating several years later it would seem that it was actually working as intended after all.
Topics: China, World News, Science
Joe Harker