China is building a giant dam that could affect the Earth's rotation
China has begun construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric power plant in southeastern Tibet. The new project, costing about $170 billion, will be nearly three times more powerful than the famous Three Gorges Dam.
With construction now underway, scientists have once again drawn attention to a NASA study suggesting that such large-scale hydroelectric structures can have a very slight but measurable effect on the Earth’s rotation.
Upon completion, the dam held about 44 billion metric tons of water. According to the scientist’s calculations, this redistribution of mass slightly increased the Earth’s moment of inertia, causing the length of a day to increase by approximately 0.06 microseconds and the axis of rotation to shift by about 2 centimeters.
These changes are imperceptible in everyday life, but modern scientific instruments are capable of detecting them. Subsequent studies have also shown that the cumulative impact of thousands of dams around the world over the past few decades could have shifted the Earth’s axis of rotation by nearly a meter.
Now, scientists’ attention is focused on a new project in China. In July 2025, the government officially began construction of a massive hydroelectric power plant on the Yarlung Tsangpo River. Over a stretch of about 50 kilometers, the river drops nearly 2,000 meters, making this location one of the most powerful hydropower resources on the planet.
The new plant is expected to generate about 300 billion kWh of electricity per year—nearly three times more than the Three Gorges Dam produces.
Beyond its engineering feats, the project raises environmental concerns. Downstream, the Yarlung Tsangpo becomes the Brahmaputra River, which flows through India and Bangladesh. Millions of people, agriculture, and river ecosystems depend on its stable flow. Experts warn that changes in flow could affect fish migration, sediment transport, and seasonal flooding.
So far, physicists cannot say whether the new mega-dam will have a noticeable effect on the Earth’s rotation. However, the example of the “Three Gorges” Dam has already shown that large-scale engineering projects are capable not only of altering the landscape and rivers but also of causing barely perceptible changes in the physical parameters of the entire planet.
This is reported by The Pulse.
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