Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on FacebookIt is not your imagination the world is getting slower
@ 2022/08/10Length of day getting longer
Precise astronomical observations, combined with atomic clocks, have revealed that the length of a day is suddenly getting longer and boffins can’t think of a reason.
Earth’s rotation around its axis has been speeding up over the past few decades. Since this determines how long a day is, this trend has been making our days shorter. It turns out that a day is very rarely exactly the magic number of 86,400 seconds.
In June 2022 we set a record for the shortest day over the past half a century or so. This stuffs up GPS and other precision technologies.
A 24 hour day is apparently a new thing for the earth. A few billion years ago, an Earth day was only about 19 hours which was hardly enough time to do anything.
For the past 20,000 years, another process has been working in the opposite direction, speeding up Earth’s rotation. When the last ice age ended, melting polar ice sheets reduced surface pressure, and Earth’s mantle started steadily moving toward the poles.
Precise astronomical observations, combined with atomic clocks, have revealed that the length of a day is suddenly getting longer and boffins can’t think of a reason.
Earth’s rotation around its axis has been speeding up over the past few decades. Since this determines how long a day is, this trend has been making our days shorter. It turns out that a day is very rarely exactly the magic number of 86,400 seconds.
In June 2022 we set a record for the shortest day over the past half a century or so. This stuffs up GPS and other precision technologies.
A 24 hour day is apparently a new thing for the earth. A few billion years ago, an Earth day was only about 19 hours which was hardly enough time to do anything.
For the past 20,000 years, another process has been working in the opposite direction, speeding up Earth’s rotation. When the last ice age ended, melting polar ice sheets reduced surface pressure, and Earth’s mantle started steadily moving toward the poles.
