Although we are all aware that the length of our days varies with the season, the shortest day of the year will occur in a few weeks.
A scientist has warned that the shortest day in history is rapidly approaching due to an unforeseen acceleration of Earth’s rotation.
Today, the Earth completes one circle of the Sun by rotating on its axis 365 times, which is precisely why we count this number of days in a year.
We think about this one year on Earth every time it turns. In reality, though, the number of times it revolves on its axis has changed over time, ranging from 490 to 372 days.
The speed of rotation is influenced by numerous factors. For instance, the Moon shifting away from the Earth, changes within the Earth, or fluctuating sea levels.
This time, though, it’s fastening strangely, and no one knows why.
According to the Daily Mail, astrophysicist Graham Jones of the University of London said that this year’s July 9, July 22, or August 5 could see an acceleration of our little green globe.
Our dates will be 1.30, 1.38, or 1.51 milliseconds shorter as a result of the Earth’s speeding up.
Even though there just appears to be a small alteration in time, researchers believe that this could have an effect on GPS systems and our ability to precisely measure time.
Scarily, there’s no explanation for why the Earth will quicken its pace, with Moscow State University’s Leonid Zotov telling Timeanddate.com: “Nobody expected this. The cause of this acceleration is not explained.”
“Most scientists believe it is something inside the Earth,” he stated. “Ocean and atmospheric models don’t explain this huge acceleration.”
Natural disasters and other changes on Earth can also trigger it. One researcher gave an example of a period when an earthquake actually forced the Earth to speed up and shorten a few of our days.
A magnitude 9.0 earthquake that occurred off the east coast of Japan in March 2011 caused the Earth’s axis to shift, shortening our days on the planet. It shifted the Earth’s axis by almost 17 centimetres and was the strongest earthquake to ever strike the nation.
It may have really shifted the main island by 2.4 meters, which is shocking.
“Earthquakes can change the Earth’s rotation by rearranging the Earth’s mass,” Dr Richard Gross of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explained to Popular Mechanics in 2011.
“This is what a spinning ice skater does to make herself spin faster. She moves her arms closer to her body, she’s moving her mass closer to the axis about which she’s rotating. And earthquakes do the same thing.”
“This earthquake must’ve moved the mass on average a bit closer to the Earth’s rotation axis to make the Earth rotate faster and the length of the day a bit smaller.”
Don’t worry, though, since although scientists have noted that the world has been spinning faster since 2020, they also predict that it will slow down. They simply aren’t sure when.
“Sooner or later, Earth will decelerate,” Zotov said.
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