Earth clocked its shortest day ever on record on June 29, 2022, timeanddate.com reported citing data from the IERS. The planet completed a full spin on June 29, in a time that was 1.59 milliseconds shorter than the standard 24-hour rotation. It nearly broke the record again on July 26, with the day being 1.50 milliseconds shorter than 24 hours.
Recently, the Earth has been moving quicker. Since the 1960s, 2020 marked the shortest month on record for the planet. On July 19 of that year, 1.47 milliseconds shorter than a typical 24-hour day, scientists recorded the shortest day so far.
Earth’s spin is slowing over considerably longer time scales
The Earth takes a few milliseconds longer to accomplish one spin per century. Although the exact causes of the same are unknown. Notably, the experts hypothesize that it may be related to processes in the core’s inner or outer layers, oceans, tides, or even variations in the climate.
In order to maintain the rate at which Earth orbits the Sun compatible with the measurements from atomic clocks, the adoption of the ‘negative leap’ second may be necessary if the Earth’s rotation rate continues to increase.
The clock advances from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 before resetting to 00:00:00 during the negative leap second. And this time jump can cause programs to crash or damage data because of the timestamps on the data storage. Recently, it nearly broke the record once more this month on the 26th of July.
