Our planet is now spinning faster, relax, Norris, you do not feel it, but the reality is that the Earth’s rotation is accelerating and it has been happening since 2020, but no one can understand why this is happening. Our planet, as you know, rotates on its own axis, and now it is doing so faster than normal. Graham Jones (an astrophysicist) said that July 9, July 22 and August 5 were the fastest days recorded so far. Wow!!
Look, you are not going to notice it, you are not going to get dizzy and they are not going to let you leave work earlier (unfortunately), but those days were shortened by 1.66 milliseconds (not even a blink lasts that short), but the important thing here is not what we lose, but understanding what is happening… because until very recently, the Earth was much slower…
Are the days getting shorter?
It seems so, normally a solar day lasts exactly 24 hours, that is 86,400 seconds. But the Earth has never been exact (like your best friend when you meet for coffee), and sometimes it shifts a few milliseconds, sometimes faster and sometimes slower… The normal thing is that it would become slower and slower (especially because of tidal friction, which by the way depends on the Moon).
But suddenly, 2020 arrived and everything changed (for everyone, not just us), as if someone had given a push, everything began to go a little faster. Why? Nobody knows.
2020: record
What used to happen once every thousand years now happens almost every summer and scientists cannot stop being amazed by the changes.
- In 2021: a day lasted 1.47 ms less.
- In 2022: 1.59 ms less.
- In 2023: 1.31 ms less.
- And the absolute record was July 5, 2024, with 1.66 ms less.
No, there is no guy timing with a Casio, this is calculated with atomic clocks, the most precise clocks on Earth, and they are also used to synchronize GPS, satellites, networks… absolutely everything is done thanks to these clocks.
And what is causing this acceleration?
We do not know, we do know that the dates so far have coincided with specific moments of the lunar cycle (when the moon’s orbit moves away from the Earth’s equator), so that could be the reason for the faster rotation, because it would move the mass of our planet.
But has that not always happened?
Yes! The Moon has an incredible impact on Earth’s mass, and it is even estimated that when the Earth was formed, a day lasted between 3 and 6 hours (what some of us take to fall asleep on a Sunday), imagine having a 3 hour routine…
Is it serious that the days are shortening by a few milliseconds?
For our daily life, absolutely nothing, because you are not going to notice it (nor have time to), for the technological world there could be problems, because all systems are organized with GPS and satellites, so the change in precision could make many systems become misaligned. With this we do not mean that the internet will suddenly stop working, but that engineers are evaluating all possibilities…
And what happens in a distant future?
In the long, very long term (when we are no longer here), scientists believe that if the trend reverses again, the Earth will end up synchronizing with the Moon. This would happen in… breathe… 50 billion years, you have time to prepare.
At that moment, there would no longer be tides (we are very sorry for people who love surfing), we would always see the same side of the Moon and only half of the Earth would be able to see it.
But darling, do not worry, neither you, nor I, nor humanity will be here to see it. By the time that happens, the Sun will be dying out and the Earth will be uninhabitable. Problems for the “me” of the future… very far future.
There will be no sudden stop
None of that. These kinds of changes take thousands, millions of years, right now, the only thing we have is a planet in a bit of a hurry, but we do not even notice it…