The Earth Recorded Its Shortest Day and Why It Is Bad

Do you know that The Earth Recorded Its Shortest Day in history? Find out why this shortest day of earth is not good for all of us.

If you feel you are running out of time, you are correct. It turns out that the days are indeed becoming shorter and shorter. The earth recorded its shortest day, which is bad on many levels and will cause outages. According to the National Physical Laboratory in England, Earth experienced its shortest day on record occurred on June 29, slicing 1.59 milliseconds off our regular 24-hour cycle.

The Earth Recorded Its Shortest Day and Why It Is Bad

This recently documented occurrence looks to be increasing in frequency. Popular Mechanics cited that 2020 was the year with the 28 shortest days. Such observations could be recorded thanks to the utilization of atomic clocks since the 1960s.

The problem is that scientists do not appear to know much more. The speedier days could be caused by various factors, including fluctuating tides, the Earth's distance from the moon, and climate change. According to NASA, even a powerful El Nio wind or a sufficiently large earthquake can alter the time. Likewise, Dr Leonid Zotov explained to Time and Date that the earth recorded its shortest day due to the "Chandler wobble". In other words, it denotes a minute, irregular movement at the Earth's geographical poles.

Many Factors Could Shorten Earth's Day

Dr. Zotov told  Time and Date that the normal amplitude of the Chandler wobble at the Earth's surface is three to four metres. However, between 2017 and 2020, it disappeared. If the Earth continues to decelerate, it could significantly impact how we measure time. As described in Time and Date, the powers-that-be may need to implement a "negative leap second" to ensure that we stay aligned with atomic clocks (which provide the most accurate readout of time).

There are approximately 400 atomic super clocks around the world for us to march to the same beat. With the implementation of a negative leap second, clocks would effectively skip a second in order to keep up. According to Meta, the parent corporation of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, this could also wreak havoc on technological infrastructure. On July 25, the business published an essay detailing its stance on the "leap second".

Shortened Earth Day Will Affect Us in Many Different Ways

Authors of the Meta post-Oleg Obleukhov, a production engineer, and Ahmad Byagowi, a research scientist, wrote, "The impact of a negative leap second has never been studied on a broad scale; it might have a devastating effect on software that relies on timers or schedules."

When Is The Shortest Day on Earth?

Alternatively, this millisecond shift could be insignificant. In fact, a day on Earth was only 18 hours 1.4 billion years ago, when the moon was substantially closer to our planet than it is now, forcing Earth to spin much faster. Fred Watson, Australia's astronomer-in-residence, told Australia's ABC News that the planet's speed frequently fluctuates, typically slowing by 3 milliseconds per day per century.

Is Earth Living on Borrowed Time?

"When you get down to the nitty-gritty, you see that Earth is not just a spinning solid ball," Watson remarked. It has liquid on the inside, liquid on the outside, an atmosphere, and all these things slosh about somewhat. Watson said that this slowdown is the reason why scientists devised the initial leap second to speed up time to keep atomic clocks and astronomical clocks (which precisely reflect the movements of the sun and moon) in sync.

So perhaps, instead of stressing about how quickly or slowly we're traversing this plane of existence, we can all agree that time is an illusion. At the very least, we can all take comfort in the knowledge that, according to experts like Zotov, this is the fastest our Earth will ever get. Or perhaps we will see even shorter days in the future? Is this a bad omen? What say you?

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