Earth is starting to spin faster — and scientists are considering doing something unprecedented

livesicence.com ^ | 1/24/2025 | Pandora Dewan

[Signalman]

Two days this summer have been unusually short, with the shortest expected on Aug. 5, leading global timekeepers to consider adding a negative leap second.

The Earth's rotation has accelerated in recent decades, leading scientists to consider adding the first ever negative leap second.

Earth is spinning so fast that global timekeepers are considering something that's never been done before: adding a negative leap second.

So far this year, July 9 and July 22 have been unusually short — by about 1.3 and 1.4 milliseconds, respectively. However, Aug. 5 is expected to be even shorter, losing roughly 1.5 milliseconds, according to timeanddate.com.

This follows a trend that has been observed since 2020. "We now have slightly shorter days than in the last 50 years," Dirk Piester, head of Time Dissemination Group 4.42 at Germany's national meteorology institute, previously told Live Science.

Earth's energy imbalance is rising much faster than scientists expected — and now researchers worry they might lose the means to figure out why an abstract illustration of a clock with swirls of light Groundbreaking atomic clock is off by less than 1 second every 100 million years

Why is Earth spinning faster? A day on Earth lasts roughly 86,400 seconds, or 24 hours — the time it takes for the planet to fully rotate on its axis. But exactly how long it takes to perform one full rotation depends on many factors, including the positions of the sun and the moon, and Earth's gravitational field.

[Glad2bnuts]

Flat Earthers would say that the Suns orbit has sped up, along with the entire Universe.