Quote Originally Posted by alismith View Post
The slow change in the Earth's axis is called precession. The axis is pointing towards Polaris right now, but in 13,000 years it will be pointing towards Vega, then 13,000 years after that, it will be pointing back to Polaris. So, Earth's complete precession cycle is 26,000 years.

However, the rotation of the earth is what causes sunrise and sunset, and that only changes a few nano-seconds every day. Even in 100 years, the Earth has slowed down about 200-300 nanoseconds.

Since the Devonian Time Period, the Earth's daylight hours have increased from 22.6 hrs. to 24 hrs. today. That's an increase of 1.4 hours in a time period of 252,000,000 years.

I doubt, during the lifetime of a human, anyone would notice any change in either the precession, or daylight hours.

So, if anyone senses a difference in the length of a day, there has to be another reason they're seeing it. It's not scientific.

Most people don't know this. I'm impressed.

Our next "North Star" will be Gamma Cephei (A.K.A. Alrai) and after that it will be Alpha Lyrae (Vega - pronounced VEE-GAH, not "VAY-GAH"), then finally back to Alpha Ursae Minoris (Polaris).

Also, since the earth rotates faster than the moon orbits it, it adds orbital energy to the moon via tidal coupling, causing it to slowly move away from the earth (and also slows down the rotation of the earth).

In eons to come, the moon will have moved so far out, and the earth slowed so much, that the moon will be in a geosynchronous orbit and appear in one spot in the sky (albeit tracing out a small figure 8 pattern).

Our dust will be dust by then.......