Science
The Earth Just Started Spinning Faster Than Ever Before And Scientists Are Gravely Concerned
This is the first time in world history that the global clocks have to be sped up.
The Earth completed an entire rotation 1.59 milliseconds under 24 hours, and this has the experts around the world alarmed.
“This would be required to keep civil time—which is based on the super-steady beat of atomic clocks—in step with solar time, which is based on the movement of the Sun across the sky,” Time and Date reported.
Some scientists speculate that the world spinning faster could be due to climate change. Some fear that it could be devastating.
Earth is spinning faster than it has in the last half-century, igniting a fiery debate about what we should do to keep the world on track. pic.twitter.com/3v0A6ru1gI
— Seeker by The Verge (@Seeker) July 30, 2022
⏰ If it feels like there is never enough time in the day, there may be a reason.
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) July 31, 2022
Earth experienced its shortest day since records began last month https://t.co/g2eLh0DFaH
Earth rotation has been slowing down over the years. It has leaped 27 seconds since the 1970, and atomic clocks had to be fixed in the last 50+ years.
But just recently the Earth recorded its shortest day since scientists began using atomic clocks to measure its rotation. This is the fastest rotation since 2020. It came close to beat the record on July 26th, having a complete rotation of 1.5 milliseconds faster under 24 hours.
Spinning faster: Earth has recorded its shortest day since scientists began using atomic clocks to measure its rotational speed.
— timeanddate.com (@timeanddate) July 27, 2022
Why is this happening? We check the latest numbers: https://t.co/iD4K9rnaiy
📷: ©https://t.co/K3v8k7bMqJ pic.twitter.com/lLifcY5Vko
“A negative leap second would mean that our clocks skip one second, which could potentially create problems for IT systems,” the Time and Date website warned.
Meta, or new from Facebook, warned that the negative leap second could have consequences for communication systems, computers and smartphones.
They say the leap second would “mainly benefits scientists and astronomers” but that it is a “risky practice that does more harm than good.”
They also note that by adding a negative leap second, the clocks will change from 23:59:58 to 00:00:00 and this could have “devastating effect” on software relying on precise timers and schedulers.
Time and Date suggests that the lessening length of the days may be related to Earth’s “inner or outer layers, oceans, tides, or even temperature,” but that’s just a suggestion.
Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard, and Nikolay Sidorenkov will argue at the upcoming annual meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society this week that the Earth’s rotation speeding up may be related to the ‘Chandler wobble,’ the term given to the small and irregular movement of the geographical poles across the surface of the globe.
The normal amplitude of the Chandler wobble is about three to four meters at Earth’s surface,” reports Zotov to Time and Date. “But from 2017 to 2020 it disappeared.”
The specialists at The International Earth Rotation Service in Paris will notify governments 6 months in advance if they need to add or remove seconds from the world clock.
Will Earth spin faster and faster as the days go by, or this is just normal? Nobody knows for sure.
