The cause of the Earth’s different rotation speed is still unknown. (Dossier)
On July 29, Earth broke the record for the shortest day as it completed a full rotation in 1.59 milliseconds less than its standard 24-hour rotation.
According to the independent, the planet has recently been increasing its speed. In 2020, the Earth saw the shortest month on record since the 1960s. On July 19 of that year, the shortest month of all time was measured. It was 1.47 milliseconds shorter than a typical 24-hour day.
The following year, the planet continued to spin at a generally increased rate, but did not break any records. However, according to Interesting engineering (IE), a 50-year phase of shorter days may be starting right now.
The cause of the Earth’s different rotation speed is still unknown. But scientists speculate that this could be due to processes in the inner or outer layers of the core, oceans, tides or even climate changes.
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Some researchers also believe this could be related to the movement of Earth’s geographic poles across its surface, known as the “Chandler wobble.” In simpler terms, this is similar to the shaking seen when a snowball begins to gain momentum or slows down, according to scientists Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard and Nikolay Sidorenkov.
According to the Independent, if the Earth continues to spin at an increasing rate, it could lead to the introduction of negative leap seconds, in an attempt to keep the speed at which the Earth orbits the Sun consistent with the measurement of atomic clocks.
However, the second negative jump would have potentially confusing consequences for smartphones, computers and communications systems. Citing a Meta blog, the outlet reported that the second jump “primarily benefits scientists and astronomers” but is a “risky 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 of the data storage.
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Meta also said that if a negative split second occurs, the clock will change from 23:59:58 to 00:00:00, and this could have a “devastating effect” on software that relies on timers and schedulers. According to IE, to solve this, international timekeepers may need to add a negative interleaved second – a “drop second”.
In particular, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the main time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time, has already been updated with a leap second 27 times.