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NRI Latest News: In the Three Gorges Dam, in China, an extraordinary number of workers have been working for nearly 17 years to build the mega-project since 1994 and completed just last year, 2011. The mega-project costs over $31 million to be world’s largest dam built.
In 2005, NASA, the American research agency, revealed that the crushing force of water from the Three Gorges Dam causes the Earth to sink a little bit compared to before it was constructed. The dam has also extended a slight bulge to the midsection of the Earth and made both polar regions shrink. The weight of water confined in the dam has changed the speed at which the Earth rotates, and today a day is longer than it was.
The Three Gorges Dam can be regarded as a big landmark in the economic development of China. Among all the big plans that China has used to express its influence across the world’s political and global economics, the Three Gorges Dam holds a special position. It not only altered the speed at which the Earth revolves around the sun but also reshaped the shape of the Earth.
The Yangtze is the longest Asian river. It originates in the mountainous west of China and flows into the South China Sea. Many years ago, in 1911, catastrophically swollen waters from heavy rains along the Yangtze River killed at least 200,000 people and made millions homeless. There was a more destructive flood in 1931 and killed nearly 3 million people. To safeguard the country and its people from such calamities, the Chinese government decided to go ahead with this costly project-a decision that was supposed to take a significant amount of time before it could become a reality.
A gigantic quantity of concrete estimated at 280 million cubic meters has been utilized in the construction of the dam. Pundits say that if this volume of concrete were to be poured over a country like Switzerland, then the whole country would be covered under two feet of cement. Such a large quantity of water this dam retains, it has slowed down the gradual motion of the Earth. Accordingly, for such a slowdown of 0.06 microseconds, the day on Earth has prolonged by the same amount.
Thanks to the dam, China is empowered to combat floods, among other natural disasters, while producing vast quantities of electricity. When there is a drought, the three reservoirs of the Three Gorges Dam can release the water they have stored downstream to reduce the drought period.
