Earth's Rotation Is Faster Than Usual, Leading to the Shortest Day Recorded

The discovery that the Earth is rotating faster than usual and that days are becoming shorter than usual have scientists perplexed.

According to TimeAndDate and The Guardian, Earth made one complete rotation on June 29 - 1.59 milliseconds short of the standard 24-hour period. The milestone comes as Earth's days have been progressively shorter in recent years.

Earth Is Spinning Faster Than Usual This Year

Days are getting longer rather than shorter due to the Earth's rotation slowing down over time. Around 1.4 billion years ago, a day would have taken less than 19 hours to complete.

The most recent time this happened was in 2016, when the International Telecommunication Union of the United Nations added seconds to the global clock in June or December to compensate for the longer days.

According to The Guardian, it may be doubtful that the ITU will extend the period during its subsequent window in December.

Professor of mathematics Leonid Zotov is anticipated to propose that the "Chandler wobble," a phenomenon linked to the current trend of shorter days, may provide an explanation.

Astronomer Seth Carlo Chandler noted the poles wobbled over a 14-month period in the late 1880s, which led to the discovery of the Chandler wobble.

"The normal amplitude of the Chandler wobble is about three to four meters at Earth's surface, but from 2017 to 2020, it disappeared," Zotov told Time and Date (via UPI).

Whatever the precise cause of the Chandler Wobble, it mostly affects astronomers and precise GPS navigation.

ALSO READ: A Day Was Shorter Than 24 Hours in 2020 Because of Earth Spinning Faster

Timeanddate.com claims that 2020 had 28 of the world's shortest days ever recorded since the advent of the atomic clock in the 1960s, which made the measurement more scientifically precise.

The claim is based on data from the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service. The Earth's accelerated rotation continued to accelerate in 2021 compared to the norm, resulting in the shortest day yet seen in 2022.

(Photo : LAURENT FIEVET/AFP via Getty Images)
A new dataset from Google reveals the features on the surface of the Earth in almost real-time, the company announced.

Experts Want a Leap Second To Solve Time Issues

Scientists may wish to add a negative leap second to help compensate for the shorter days we experience if Earth's rotational speed trend persists. But, as stated in a July 25 Meta post, such may result in technological problems.

"The impact of a negative leap second has never been tested on a large scale; it could have a devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers," meta engineers Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagowi note in the post (via Popular Mechanics).

However, they pointed out that every jump second causes a lot of anguish for those in charge of hardware infrastructure.

The slowing of the Earth's spin over many years necessitated the creation of the leap second in 1972 to keep time moving forward. To keep the Coordinated Universal Time current, an additional 27 leap seconds have been added since that time. However, if Earth's rotation is actually accelerating, not only does it rule out adding a leap second, but it also raises the possibility of a negative leap second to maintain Earth's dance with time in sync.

Because of this, Meta wishes to do away with the positive leap second and prevent any mention of a negative leap second.

Engineers want the leap second eliminated, while scientists investigate the causes of the Earth's shifting rotating speed. Of course, if Earth slows down to a more normal pace, the concern will go away. Or, in a more severe case, the planet may start spinning even faster.

"The leap second and the offset it creates cause issues all over the industry," the engineers write, per Popular Mechanics.

The engineers said leap second events have caused problems across the industry and continue to present many risks. Every time a leap second is added, they as a sector run into issues.

Every time it occurs, the community is destroyed since it is such a rare occurrence. The leap second is currently doing more harm than good, leading to disruptions and outages due to an increased need for clock precision across all industries.