China’s Earth-Slowing Megaproject: Scientific Community Erupts As NASA Confirms Planetary Impact

When China built the Three Gorges Dam, they didn’t just create the world’s largest power station—they literally slowed down the planet. NASA confirmed it in 2025, and scientists worldwide are losing their minds about it.

The numbers are staggering. This concrete monster stretches 2,335 meters across the Yangtze River, standing 185 meters tall. It holds 40 cubic kilometers of water. That’s not a typo—forty cubic kilometers. The construction site sprawled over 51,800 square miles, making it Earth’s largest construction project when completed in 2012.

Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center dropped the bombshell between April and May 2025. The dam shifted Earth’s axis by 2 centimeters. The day got longer by 0.06 microseconds. Sure, that sounds tiny. But over the universe’s entire existence, that adds up to about 3 days. Three whole days.

NASA confirms: China’s dam shifted Earth’s axis 2 centimeters, lengthening days by 0.06 microseconds

The physics is simple enough. All that water changed how Earth’s mass is distributed. Think of a figure skater pulling their arms out—they spin slower. Same principle, planetary scale. The reservoir increased Earth’s moment of inertia, messing with our angular momentum. Every time you move mass around, you technically affect Earth’s rotation. But this? This is the first time humans have done it measurably.

Scientists are freaking out, and honestly, who can blame them? China’s infrastructure obsession—they call themselves the “Infrastructure Maniac”—just proved that humans can alter planetary mechanics. The Three Gorges Dam generates power and controls floods, sure. But nobody planned on messing with time itself. Despite its massive scale, the dam only meets 3% of China’s energy needs, serving more as a strategic tool for managing territorial challenges than solving the nation’s power crisis.

The international scientific community is scrambling. What happens to global timekeeping systems? Should mega-projects face planetary-scale impact assessments? Nobody knows yet. The environmental consequences beyond the rotation effects are still being studied. The mass of water has made Earth more rounded at the equator and flatter at the poles, fundamentally altering our planet’s shape.

This isn’t just about one dam anymore. It’s about realizing that human engineering has reached a scale where we can accidentally tinker with the planet’s fundamental properties. China built something so massive it changed how Earth spins. Let that sink in.