Australia isn't where you think it is

Australia is moving to the North. Fast.

It's rotating clockwise, every single year, and your GPS can’t keep up with it.

Australia sits at the junction of a number of major and minor tectonic plates, and as such the shifting of the magma beneath moves Australia northwards 6.9 centimetres a year, while rotating it clockwise.

The great continental nation has moved 1.5 metres since 1994. According to the New York Times this is a lightning speed in terms of geology.

While this movement used to be a problem only for cartographers and almanac compilers, it’s also been foxing ‘modern’ technology recently.

GPS, also known as Navstar, launched in 1978. It has had to update the coordinates of everything and everywhere in Australia on four occasions already. At the end of 2016 GPS will update again, and move Australia 1.5 metres up.

This seems like a lot to move an entire country, but for the 1994 update the nation it was a lot more - 200 metres.

It's more than an inconvenience, a few centimetres of movement can throw off a GPS, and as driverless technology becomes more and more common, this could become a more serious problem to overcome.

Ok, maybe not as dramatic as that.

HT Quartz

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