Will the Longitude & Latitude change after thousands of years ?.?

Question

The tectonic plates are moving at the rate of about 50 to 100 mm per year. In that case the top layer on tectonic plate that is crest also should move at that rate. Can we find the latitude and longitude of any particular city will change after 1000 of years. What will happen to the other end of tectonic plate boundary?

Answer 1

Yeah!. The coordinates (longitude and latitude) for any city or place in the crust of the Earth will change after some years. The change is very slow (South American longitudes increase by 1 sec in 440 years). The only city where the longitude could not be changed is London, because in 1884, the International Meridian Conference adopted the Greenwich meridian as the universal prime meridian or zero point of longitude. As the latitude is refereed to the rotation axis, all the cities or place can change, but Santa's headquarters won't be changed.

Answer 2

the longitude & latitude grid does not change.
if the reference is still maintained the same, then the longitude & latitude for different locations change, with shifting tectonic plates.

assume the grid as a sphere above the earths surface, unaffected by the movement of layers below.now keep setting the reference , zero on this grid to a specific point on the earth.

Answer 3

Ganapati, I guess the other two members are close to answering your question. Unless the shape of earth itself changes, these two imaginary lines would not alter its position or angle.

But as you say, the cities might change its place due to tectonic movements. Once India was part of Africa and split itself to join Asia. Which means if you have these lines drawn for earth during the "Pangea" time, I am damn sure that India is far away and the location corresponding to these angular lines have changed.

Answer 4

http://members.aol.com/meersalz/CelestialNavigation.html the latitude and longitude itself-no; They are lines that we use for navigation and measurments on an atlas, but the land masses on the earth will change (Contanental shift) also seismic shift will change the position of the land on earth.

Answer 5

actually the longitude &latitude are imgainary lines,so i think it will remain the same after thousands of years.