Australia's coordinates out by more than 1.5 metres: scientist

Australia has had to change its position on world maps four times in the past 50 years.

The country happens to be located on one of the world's fastest-moving tectonic plates, travelling about 2.7 inches north each year.

That's almost three times as fast as the plate on which the U.S. is positioned, which only travels around one inch per year.

According to Dr Lucia Perez-Diaz from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway University, tectonic plates, the massive chunks of earth on which continents sit and move about as fast as your fingernails grow; between 5 and 10 centimetres per year.

"The reason why different plates move at different speeds is relatively simple each plate is different," Perez-Diaz told Business Insider Australia on Thursday.

"For each plate, its rate of motion will be determined by a balance between the forces trying to make it move and those resisting that motion."

A few centimetres sounds like a relatively small distance, but because of this shift, maps and models of our planet can become out of date.

This isn't so much of a problem on a model globe, but it can cause problems for GPS and satnav systems.

A few inches of difference can mean longitudes and latitudes don't line up with GPS coordinates, and in 1994 the adjustment was a whole 200 meters, which is enough to get your deliveries to the wrong house.

The next adjustment is due at the end of the year and will be about 1.6 meters, which is not quite enough to throw off GPS this time.

However, the next generation of GPS devices that use satellites and ground stations will be accurate to within an inch, and this precise location is important for Australia's mining industry, which is set to use more and more autonomous trucks, which rely on coordinates.

For everyone else though, Perez-Diaz says this change is unlikely to cause havoc. Endit