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Measuring Earth's Wobble Without Looking at the Stars


Most people are familiar with the fact that the Earth spins on its axis once every day. The spin however, isn’t as steady as you might think. Like a spinning top slowing down, Earth’s axis wobbles, scribing out a circle on the night sky that currently points very close to the Pole Star in the northern hemisphere. This wobble is driven by the shape of the Earth and for decades, this wobble has been tracked by a network of radio telescopes. A team of astronomers have measured this wobble to a level of accuracy that has never been achieved before.

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