Australia moving up within the world... actually

Australia will alter its latitude and longitude, a central authority science frame says, to position the substantial united states into alignment with worldwide navigation satellite tv for pc structures.

The country's coordinates are presently out by means of more than a metre, Geoscience Australia says, and the discrepancy could cause essential complications for viable new technology such as driverless vehicles which require particular location facts.

"We should alter our strains of latitude and longitude... so that the satellite navigation structures that all of us use on our smartphones these days can align with all of the digital map facts," Geoscience's Dan Jaksa told the Australian Broadcasting corporation this week.

Australia currently movements north by means of about seven centimetres every 12 months due to everyday tectonic movement and Jaksa said the change was wished "to maintain tempo with that".

He said smartphones had been already correct to within five-10 metres, but shrinking the space could be critical in coming years, specifically with extra use of remotely-operated cars in farming and mining.

"(And) around the corner, in the not too distant destiny, we are going to have probable driverless vehicles or at the least self reliant vehicles wherein, 1.five metres, well, you are in the center of the road or you're in another lane," he said on Thursday.

"So the facts desires to be as correct because the statistics we're collecting."

Australia's nearby coordinate machine, the Geocentric Datum of Australia, was remaining updated in 1994 and officials accept as true with it will be out by way of 1.eight metres by using 2020 unless corrected.