It is still not clear what causes the different rotational speeds of the Earth. (File)
On July 29, Earth broke the record for the shortest day when it completed a complete rotation in 1.59 milliseconds less than its standard 24-hour rotation.
Follow Independence, the planet is picking up speed recently. Going back to 2020, Earth saw the shortest month ever recorded since the 1960s. On July 19 of that year, the shortest time was measured. It’s 1.47 milliseconds shorter than a typical 24-hour day.
The following year, the planet continued to rotate at an generally increased rate, but it did not break any records. However, according to Interesting technique (IE), the 50-year period with shorter dates may be starting now.
It is still not clear what causes the different rotational speeds of the Earth. But scientists speculate that this could be due to processes in the inner or outer layers of the core, oceans, tides or even changes in climate.
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Some researchers also believe this may be related to the movement of the Earth’s geographic poles across its surface, known as the “Chandler oscillation”. In simpler terms, this is similar to the wobble one sees when a gyro starts to gain momentum or slows down, according to scientists Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard and Nikolay Sidorenkov.
Follow IndependenceIf the Earth continues to rotate at an increasing rate, it could lead to the introduction of negative leap seconds, which keep the Earth’s speed around the Sun consistent with atomic clock measurements.
However, the second negative leap will have confusing consequences for smartphones, computers and communication systems. Citing a Meta blog, the journal reports that the second leap “primarily benefits scientists and astronomers” but that it is a “risky practice that does more harm than good”.
This is because the clock goes from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 before resetting to 00:00:00. Thus, a time jump like this can cause programs to crash and corrupt data due to timestamps on the data storage.
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Meta also says that if a negative leap second occurs, the clock will change from 23:59:58 to 00:00:00, and this could have a “devastating impact” on counter-based software time and scheduler. Based on IEto solve this problem, international timekeepers may need an extra negative leap second – “decrement second”.
Notably, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the main time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time, has been updated with a leap second 27 times.
