The Moon is stealing time from the Earth, and it has been getting away with it for billions of years. Our planet spins so much slower than it once did that a single day has stretched from just 19 hours to the 24 we live by, and the Moon is still creeping away from us right now.

Earth’s spin is slowing, the day is getting longer, and the Moon is drifting outward at about 3.8 centimetres a year, a figure measured by bouncing lasers off the reflectors the Apollo missions left on the surface. Two things in the popular telling are worth correcting, though, because both make a careful process sound more […]