Earth
Is Australia moving?
The short answer
Yes, about 7 centimetres a year to the north-east, faster than any other continent. The drift is quick enough that in 2017 Geoscience Australia officially shifted the country's map coordinates 1.8 metres to catch up, so that GPS would keep pointing at the right spot.
Every continent rides on a tectonic plate, and every plate is moving, but Australia's is the sprinter of the group. Seven centimetres a year is about the rate your fingernails grow. For a continent, that is remarkably brisk.
It matters because of satellites. GPS works out where you are relative to the centre of the Earth, but maps are drawn relative to the ground, and the ground keeps leaving. By 2017 Australia's official coordinate system, fixed in 1994, had fallen about 1.6 metres behind where the land actually was. That is enough to put a self-driving tractor in the wrong row.
So the whole country was moved on paper. The new datum, GDA2020, shifted every coordinate 1.8 metres to the north-east, to where the continent would be in 2020. Australia will keep going, of course. The plan is to update the maps continuously rather than wait another twenty-odd years and jump again.
Source
- Australia officially moves 1.8 metres northeastGeoscience Australia