Blink and you might have missed it – June 29th, 2022 was the shortest day in recorded history, scientists say. The length was 1.59 milliseconds less than the average according to the planet’s atomic clock that has recorded this data since the 1960s. Though this may seem laughably insignificant, the increased speed of Earth’s rotation could have severe consequences.
The New Mercedes-AMG C43 Features Technology Straight From Mercedes’ Formula 1 Car’s
The “normal” length of a day is 24 hours, or 86,400 seconds. Yet, since 2016, the Earth’s rotation has accelerated, thus shortening some days by milliseconds. Scientist Leonid Zotov postulates Earth’s high tides could be causing this fluctuation. If this trend continues, Zotov says atomic time – the way we measure universal time on Earth – might have to change. Some scientists have proposed adjusting the atomic clock scale by introducing a “negative leap second” to offset the acceleration. However, some engineers oppose the leap second idea, citing the potential for large-scale tech issues.
Meta engineers Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagowi advised against the leap second in a recent blog post. Since most IT systems are set to International Atomic Time (TAI) and Universal Time (UT1), leap seconds are a fairly risky solution for the problem. To put it simply, a positive leap second can lead to server crashing and data corruption. A negative leap second, meanwhile, “has never been tested on a large scale” and could have a “devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers.”
Further, the post poses that the melting of the ice caps has something to do with the rotational speed. Much like a spinning figure skater increases their angular velocity by tucking their arms in, ice caps melting leads to angular velocity increase.
Lastly, in case you missed it, NASA’s James Webb Telescope Captures Beautiful Images of Our Universe.
