If you feel like you’re wasting time in your day, you might be right.
Scientists say that on June 29, 2022, the Earth rotated faster than normal, making it the shortest day on record since the 1960s.
The average day is 24 hours (or exactly 86,400 seconds). June 29 was 1.59 milliseconds shorter, according to CBS, which spoke to Leonid Zotov, a scientist at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute at Lomonosov Moscow State University.
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Zotov and a team of scientists recently published a study outlining possible hypotheses for the new accelerated rotation of the Earth.
They reported that the Earth has been spinning faster since 2016. According to The Guardian, 2020 had 28 of the shortest days on record in the last 50 years. (Not every day, however, is less than 24 hours.)
The increased rotation speed surprised scientists who, as Zotov and his colleagues wrote in the study, previously believed that Earth had slowed down over the past few centuries.
Scientists have not been able to say for sure what is causing the speed increase, although Zotov and other scientists will present their research and theories at the Asia Oceania Geoscience Society conference this month.
Zotov told CBS that he believes Earth’s tides may play a factor in why the planet spins faster.
According to Forbes (who also spoke with Zotov), a decline in the “Chandler Wobble” may be what’s causing the change in acceleration. The Chandler Wobble involves the movement of geographic poles across the globe’s surface, as Earth is a living, moving planet.
(The normal amplitude of the Chandler wobble is about three to four meters on Earth’s surface, but from 2017 to 2020 it disappeared, according to numerous scientific reports.)
“Polar motion is caused by geophysical processes in Earth systems, in particular currents in the ocean, winds in the atmosphere, internal processes in the Earth’s interior,” Zotov told Forbes. He told the outlet that he believes “something is happening inside the Earth all the way to the core and mantle.”
Whatever is happening in the Earth’s core and mantle is what is decaying the Chandler Wobble and causing the Earth to slow down, Zotov says.
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There are other factors potentially at play as well, including natural weather events. NASA has previously stated that changes in atmospheric pressure and strong winds (such as in El Niño years) can slow the Earth’s rotation rate. Alternatively, events such as earthquakes can accelerate rotation.
This is not the first time that the length of Earth’s days has changed. Scientists believe that more than 1.4 billion years ago, days on Earth lasted less than 19 hours.
Still, even though there is no concrete answer for the new speed of Earth’s deceleration, scientists and various professionals around the world are now arguing about the best method to deal with the changing weather.
Zotov said that if the Earth continues to spin faster, atomic time, the universal way time is measured on Earth, may have to change.
One of these proposals is to introduce a second negative jump. First proposed in the 1970s, a negative leap second would mean removing a second from clocks to maintain Coordinated Universal Time (CUT). Leap seconds are usually implemented on the last day of June or the last day of December.
Although a negative leap second has never been used, a total of 27 positive leap seconds (one second added to clocks) have been implemented about every year and a half (on average), according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST).
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Some engineers strongly oppose the use of negative leap seconds, claiming that it could cause widespread technological problems.
Meta, the tech giant that owns Facebook, shared a blog post by engineers Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagowi in July, insisting that leap seconds should be a thing of the past. They state in the blog post that leap seconds primarily benefit “scientists and astronomers by allowing them to observe celestial bodies using UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) for most purposes.”
Obleukhov and Byagowi wrote that a second negative jump could cause computer programs to crash and could corrupt data internationally, as seen in simulations the company claims to have run.
“The introduction of new leap seconds is a risky practice that does more harm than good, and we believe it is time to introduce new technologies to replace it,” they continued.
Meta-affiliated engineers believe that the melting and freezing of ice caps on the world’s highest mountains may be a factor in the increased speed of Earth’s rotation.
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“This phenomenon can be visualized simply by thinking of a spinning figure skater, who manages angular velocity by controlling his arms and hands,” they wrote. “As the arms extend, the angular velocity decreases, conserving the skater’s momentum. As soon as the skater brings the arms back the angular velocity increases.”
However, scientists, engineers and other weather and earth science professionals are now debating whether time should continue to be defined by the movement of the planet.
So what to do with the increased speed of the Earth? Only time can tell.
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