If the days seem to be getting shorter; they are and have been since the summer solstice in June. But recently the Earth recorded its shortest day for an entirely different and unusual reason – the Earth is spinning faster. Scientists find this development puzzling, although they have some theories as to why it happens and what impact it might have on our lives.
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June 29, 2022 was 1.59 milliseconds shorter than the average day, scientist Leonid Zotov told CBS News. The normal length of a day is 24 hours or 86,400 seconds. But in the past few years, Earth’s rotation has sped up, dropping milliseconds a few days. “Since 2016, the Earth has started to speed up,” said Zotov, who published a study last March on what might be causing changes in Earth’s rotation. “This year is moving faster than 2021 and 2020.”
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This increased rotation is not cut every day – just occasionally. But if this continues, the main way of measuring time on Earth – a universal, high-precision method known as atomic time – may have to change. A negative leap second may need to be added where clocks will simply skip a second. “Since we cannot change the hands of the clock associated with the rotation of the Earth, we adjust the scale of the atomic clock,” said Zotov.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb
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But not all scientists support the negative leap second. In fact, Meta engineers Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagoui recently wrote a blog post criticizing the idea. They said this could cause serious problems in the technology, such as data corruption. The concept has never been tested.
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Some scientists theorize the Earth’s tides. Others believe that the constant melting and refreezing of the polar ice caps causes the earth’s rotation to speed up and slow down.
“It all comes down to the law of conservation of momentum that applies to our planet Earth. “Each atom on the planet contributes to Earth’s angular momentum based on its distance from Earth’s axis of rotation,” Obleukhov and Byagowi told CBS. “So once things are moving, the angular velocity of the earth can vary.”
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“This phenomenon can be simply visualized by thinking of a rotating figure skater who controls the angular velocity by controlling his hands and palms,” they said. “When they spread their arms, the angular velocity decreases, conserving the skater’s momentum. As soon as the skater brings his arms back, the angular velocity increases. The same thing is happening here at this moment due to the rising temperatures of the Earth. Ice caps melt and lead to increased angular velocity.”
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In 2020, the planet experienced 28 of its shortest days in the last 50 years. The UN-affiliated International Telecommunication Union began adding occasional leap seconds in June or December. The first leap second was added in 1972, and 26 have been added since then.
According to Ars Technica, during a leap second, the clock ticks from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 to 00:00:00. The average “leap second” has caused technical problems in the past: a leap second added in 2012 caused crashes at Reddit, Gawker and the Australian airline Qantas. In 2017, a leap second took down Cloudflare.
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