Planet Earth, the only planet we can ever call home is facing a number of issues that can easily change the way we live. Despite global warming, which is something very real and affecting all living creatures, what concerns the scientist is that our planet seems to be spinning faster than ever before.
Does this mean that the global clocks would have to be sped up?
The most recent data shows that the Earth completed an entire rotation of 1.59 milliseconds under 24 hours and this raised red flags.
“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.
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
Many experts claim that this phenomenon is affected by the climate change, but no matter what the cause is, it could be devastating.
Over the years, the Earth’s rotation has been slowing down. The atomic clocks, which measure its rotation, needed to be fixed during the last 50 + years as a result of the leaps of 27 seconds since the 1970. That is the reason why the speeding comes as a shock as Earth records its shortest day since the atomic clocks have been in use.
“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. So what does that mean? According to the founders of Facebook, the negative leap second can have a “devastating effect” on software relying on precise timers and schedulers and it can do more harm than good.
⏰ If it feels like there is never enough time in the day, there may be a reason.
Earth experienced its shortest day since records began last month https://t.co/g2eLh0DFaH
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) July 31, 2022
According to Time and Date, these changes in the speed of the planet’s rotation can be a result of the Earth’s “inner or outer layers, oceans, tides, or even temperature,” but that’s just a suggestion.
Scientists will discuss the issue at the upcoming annual meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society. Among them, renowned scientists Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard, and Nikolay Sidorenkov, will argue that the change in spinning might be related to the small and irregular movement of the geographical poles across the surface of the globe, or better known as “Chandler wobble.”
“The normal amplitude of the Chandler wobble is about three to four meters at Earth’s surface,” Zotov explained for Time and Date. ‘”But from 2017 to 2020 it disappeared.”
Spinning faster: Earth has recorded its shortest day since scientists began using atomic clocks to measure its rotational speed.
Why is this happening? We check the latest numbers: https://t.co/iD4K9rnaiy📷: ©https://t.co/K3v8k7bMqJ pic.twitter.com/lLifcY5Vko
— timeanddate.com (@timeanddate) July 27, 2022
We are yet to learn what future holds for the mother Earth.
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