Matt King and Christopher Watson from the University of Tasmania wrote: “But despite this record, since 2020 this steady acceleration has curiously turned into a slowdown – the days are getting longer again and the reason is so far a mystery.” The Earth doesn’t take exactly 24 hours to spin on its axis, it usually varies ever so slightly, with even events like earthquakes affecting this time. Professors King and Watson said: “Over millions of years, the Earth’s rotation slows due to frictional effects associated with the tides driven by the Moon. “This process adds about 2.3 milliseconds to the length of each day every century. “A few billion years ago an Earth day was only about 19 hours.” However, in the last 20,000 years since the last ice age, the melting of the polar ice caps has reduced the surface pressure on Earth, causing the mantle to steadily move toward the poles. The researchers wrote: “Just as a ballet dancer spins faster as he brings his arms toward his body – the axis around which they spin – so our planet’s rotation rate increases as this mantle mass approaches Earth’s axis. “And that process shortens every day by about 0.6 milliseconds every century.” Once scientists understood small variations in rotation speed that we know occur due to tidal and seasonal effects, they were puzzled by the findings. READ MORE: Solar storm warning: Air traffic faces disruption as massive sunspot … They found that despite breaking a record for the shortest day, “the long-term trajectory appears to have shifted from shortening to lengthening since 2020,” marking an “unprecedented shift” in the past five decades. Researchers have come up with a number of different theories as to why this happens, with some suggesting that weather events such as melting ice caps or the ongoing La Nina may have played a role. Some have even speculated that it could be related to the massive volcanic eruption in Tonga that released massive amounts of water into the atmosphere, however, this seems unlikely given that the eruption took place in January of this year. Professors King and Watson added: “Scientists have hypothesized that this recent, mysterious change in the planet’s rotation speed is related to a phenomenon called the ‘Chandler oscillation’ – a small deviation in the Earth’s spin axis with a period of about 430 days. DON’T MISS: Xi gives ‘trump card’ as Taiwan export ban could cause Apple sho [INSIGHT] Xi betrays Putin as China to give EU £83bn energy bailout [REVEAL]Putin’s grip on the EU has been exposed as the bloc gives Russia extra cash [REPORT] “Observations from radio telescopes also show that the wobble has decreased in recent years. the two may be connected’. While the Earth appears to be suddenly slowing down, it is also moving away from the Sun. According to NASA, Earth is on average about 150 million kilometers away from the giant fireball, which rotates in an elliptical orbit. However, the average distance between Earth and the Sun increases slowly over time, particularly as the Sun loses mass. Nuclear fusion, which involves the conversion of mass into energy, is what powers the Sun. READ MORE: Putin humiliated as mobbed for NASA abandoning ISS
