The Earth is breaking its own record. It’s rotating faster than its average speed and last month, Earth completed one rotation in less than 24 hours.
The time recorded on July 29 was 1.59 milliseconds shorter than Earth’s usual duration of rotation. According to the Independent, it is not the first time Earth has increased its speed.
Earth has been spinning faster for the last two years.
Earth’s Rotation Speed in Past
Comparing the events of the past and today, Earth’s speed is definitely changing. In the past, the rotating speed of our planet was more thus making the days shorter.
However, this was until the 8th Century BCE and since then the Earth’s speed has slowed down thus increasing the length of a day.
And this increase occurred every century by a duration of 2.3 milliseconds. But in 2020, Earth again recovered its speed and completed the rotation in 1.47 milliseconds less than usual time.
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This record was made after 60 years. In 2021, Earth again increased its speed but the duration of completing a rotation was not close enough to set a record.
Experts say that Earth will continue to increase its speed of rotation for the next 50 years and we will experience shorter days in the upcoming years.
Why is Earth Rotating Fast?
Experts believe that the reason behind the increased speed of Earth is due to the Chandler wobble.
As per this, temperature and pressure changes in oceans cause the geographic poles of Earth to face small deviations. This is known as Chandler Wobble.
However, the experts are also not sure whether this is the accurate reason for the changed speed of Earth.
Is Earth’s Faster Rotation Bad?
A short day may sound good but for the IT sector, the change is not positive. It would cause negative leap seconds that will impact communication systems and may corrupt data.
Timers and schedulers used in software would be affected badly by negative leave seconds as per the Meta. To solve this, a drop second should be added to compensate for the time loss due to Earth’s faster rotation.
Already, the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) has added a leap second to regulate the time across the globe 27 times since 1972. Further addition of leap seconds may cause problems in the working of computer networks.