Earth's Spinning Faster Than 50 Years Ago, Will Spin Even Faster Warn Scientists

We all know it takes around 24 hours for Earth to complete one whole rotation on its axis, however, a UK National Physical Laboratory scientist in a conversation with Discover Magazine warns that Earth is now spinning faster than it did half a century ago.

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Each day on Earth consists of 86,400 seconds, but this isn't exactly all the time. Sometimes, over the course of a year the speed increases or decreases, resulting in the addition of a second or two, more or less.

This is affected by various factors -- the core of the planet, the oceans, the pull of the moon as well as the atmosphere.

To accurately measure time, scientists made use of atomic clocks that kept time based on how electrons in caesium atoms fall from a high-energy, excited state back to normal. Atomic clocks aren¡¯t affected by external changes like temperature shifts like regular clocks.

However, over the years, scientists noticed that even the most accurate atomic clocks were shifting from the actual time it took for Earth to complete the rotation.

According to Judah Levine, a physicist in the time and frequency division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to prevent this difference from becoming too big, in 1972, scientists decided to add leap seconds to atomic clocks.

They work similarly to leap days -- they tack to the end of the month of February every four years to make up for the difference that it takes 365.25 days for Earth to complete a revolution. However, leap years are unpredictable.

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The timing is observed by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service. They do this by sending laser beams to satellites to measure their movements, along with other methods. If they sense the difference of a second off sync, scientists around the world stop the atomic clocks for exactly one second at 11:59:59 PM on June 30 or December 31 to allow the astronomical clock to get back in the race, resulting in a leap second.

Leap seconds have been added every few years. Sadly they've not been as regular due to the rather irregular rotation of our planet with unpredictable slowing or speeding up.

However, over the years, Earth¡¯s rotational slowdown has seen further slowing down without really giving a need to add a leap second, since 2016. Also, our planet is spinning faster than it has in half a century and scientists don¡¯t really have any explanation for this phenomenon.

UK National Physical Laboratory scientist, Peter Whibberley warns the current trajectory could lead to the need for something called a negative leap second where we would need to remove a second instead of adding one to the atomic timescale to bring it back in sync.

He adds that this isn¡¯t really as simple as adding a leap second, ¡°There's never been a negative leap second before and the concern is that software that would have to handle that has never been tested operationally before.¡±

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Researchers added that the continuous nature of time is the backbone of the internet. If it won¡¯t be steady, it¡¯ll fall apart. Removing or adding even a second, trips the whole system, causing gaps in smooth flowing data.

Moreover, even in the financial industry where each transaction has its own timestamp, it would face a potential problem if, for instance, 23:59:59 second repeats itself.

But he feels it¡¯s not that big of a deal as in total, it would only add around like a minute over 100 years.