Scientists have found that Crimea is moving towards the mainland of Russia, Professor of the Institute of Applied Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Ipatov told reporters at the Day of Space Science. Its movement speed is 2.9 mm per year.
According to him, when Crimea joined Russia, scientists tried to solve the problem of the movement of tectonic plates in order to understand where the peninsula was moving. “It turned out that he was moving towards Russia - to the northeast,” the professor shared.
The study of such processes is very important for the development of very long baseline radio interferometry (VLBI) technology. Scientists need to know the distances between antennas, which are often located on different continents.
In Russia, a similar technology is used in the Kvazar-KVO complex. It includes three radio astronomy observatories: Badary (Republic of Buryatia), Zelenchukskaya (Karachay-Cherkessia) and Svetloye (Leningrad Oblast).
These observatories are connected to the St. Petersburg Center for Control, Data Collection and Processing by fiber-optic communication lines into a global radio telescope. Its effective diameter of the "mirror" exceeds 4400 km. With the help of "Kvazar-KVO", scientists obtain high-precision coordinate-time data for fundamental research.
Photo: Roscosmos / Oleg Kotov