On July 29, Earth broke its record for the shortest day as it completed a full rotation in 1.59 milliseconds less than its typical 24-hour rotation.
According to the Independent, the planet has recently been increasing its speed. Back in 2020, Earth saw its shortest month on record since the 1960s. July 19 of that year was measured as the shortest ever. It was 1.47 milliseconds shorter than a typical 24-hour period.
The following year, the planet continued to rotate at a generally increased rate, but no records were broken. However, according to Interesting Engineering (IE), a 50-year phase of shorter days may be starting right now.
The reason for the different speed of the Earth’s rotation is still unknown. But scientists speculate that this could be due to processes in the inner or outer layers of the core, the oceans, tides or even changes in climate.
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Some researchers also believe that this could be related to the movement of the Earth’s geographic poles on its surface, known as the “Chandler oscillation.” Put simply, this is similar to the quiver seen when a spinning top begins to gain momentum or slow down, according to scientists Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard and Nikolay Sidorenkov.
According to the Independent, if the Earth continues to rotate at an increasing rate, it could lead to the introduction of negative leap seconds in an attempt to maintain the rate at which the Earth rotates around the Sun as measured by atomic clocks.
However, the negative leap second would have potentially confusing implications for smartphones, computers and communications systems. Citing a Meta blog, the agency said the leap second “primarily benefits scientists and astronomers” but is a “dangerous practice that does more harm than good.”
This is because the clock advances from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 before resetting to 00:00:00. A time jump like this can therefore crash programs and corrupt data due to the timestamps in data storage.
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Meta also said that if a negative leap second occurs, the clock will change from 23:59:58 to 00:00:00, and this could have a “disastrous effect” on software that relies on timers and schedulers. According to IE, to solve this, international timekeepers may need to add a negative leap second – a “drop second”.
In particular, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the primary time standard by which the world sets clocks and time, has already been updated by leap seconds 27 times.
