Earth is spinning faster than usual and had its shortest day ever

[Nevilledog]

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Earth is spinning faster than usual and had its shortest day ever, and if it continues, we may have to institute what's called a "negative leap second." Some engineers say that would wreak havoc on IT systems.

cbsnews.com
Earth is spinning faster than usual and had its shortest day ever
If it continues, we may have to institute what's called a "negative leap second" – and some engineers say that would wreak havoc on IT systems.
5:33 AM · Aug 3, 2022

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/earth-spinning-faster-than-usual-shortest-day-ever/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=175805923

The Earth is spinning faster, and recently recorded its shortest day ever, scientists say. June 29, 2022 was 1.59 millisecond less than the average day, scientist Leonid Zotov told CBS News.

The normal length of day is 24 hours, or 86,400 seconds. But in recent years, the Earth's rotation has accelerated, shortening some days by milliseconds. "Since 2016 the Earth started to accelerate," said Zotov, who works at works for Lomonosov Moscow State University and recently published a study on what might cause the changes in Earth's rotation. "This year it rotates quicker than in 2021 and 2020."

Zotov and his colleagues believe the fluctuation could be caused by the Earth's tides.

He says not every day is shorter, but if the trend continues, atomic time – the universal way time is measured on Earth – may have to change. Some scientists propose introducing a negative leap second. "Since we can not change the clock arrows attached to the Earth rotation, we adjust the atomic clock scale," he said.

*snip*

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Hooray!!!! Y2K all over again! /nt

[Tommy Carcetti]

2. I guess we all must be having fun, right?

Time flying and what not.

[EYESORE 9001]

3. Article doesn't go into a lot of detail about tides

but it occurs to me that rising ocean levels would mean more dynamic tides. Is it too early to invoke global warming as a culprit?

[Nevilledog]

6. That was my totally unscientific first thought.

[crickets]

9. I wondered the same thing. nt

[Disaffected]

16. I don't think so.

Rising ocean levels are a result primarily of artic ice melting which causes an increase in water volume in subarctic oceans which being closer to the equator cause a reduction in rotation rate in a similar way that a spinning figure skater slows rotation by extending his/her arms i.e. it causes an decrease in rotation rate.

It may however be related to changes in the spin rate of the earth's molten core (which happens periodically resulting a reduction and eventual switching of the earth's magnetic field).

[fescuerescue]

26. Think about an ice skater. They increase their spin when they pull their center of gravity inward.

In the case of the earth, a rising ocean level means the center of gravity goes UP (outward) with the tide which means the Earth would spin slower.

I would be interested in seeing the math on that one though.

[multigraincracker]

4. Seems like today is

dragging.

[keithbvadu2]

5. When the core STOPS spinning...

[maxrandb]

7. Started accelerating in 2016. Everything that orange piece of amphibian shit touches dies!

Maybe it was just that the earth wanted that evil shitstains time in office to end quicker.

[Irish_Dem]

8. Mother Earth figures if she spins fast enough all the damn humans will fly out into outer space.

And she can get her planet back.

[Bayard]

10. My first thought as well

Use the (centrifugal) Force.

[Irish_Dem]

19. Let Mars have the humans. 6 million years with these pests I am done.

Ha Use the Force. You got that right.

[uponit7771]

22. lol

[FSogol]

11. No one?

[sarisataka]

12. So it's not just my imagination

The days really are going by faster.

[Beetwasher.]

13. Or Everyone On Earth Can Run In the Opposite Direction All at the Same Time

That would work, right?

Where's Superman when you need him?

[Disaffected]

17. Only works if everyone keeps running.

Otherwise the effect is negated when they stop so it may not be a practical solution.

[Oneironaut]

20. What If Everyone Jumped at Once?

[Kaleva]

14. It has been pretty windy lately.

[Silent3]

15. I built an open-source astromony/weather clock project, and put in special animation just in case...

...a negative leap second ever happens.

I'm definitely nerding out that the extra animation was not in vain.

https://shetline.com/video/leap_second_display.mp4

https://github.com/kshetline/aw-clock

[FakeNoose]

18. Aren't our time measuring devices more accurate now than 100 years ago?

Well yes, I'm sure that's true.

Maybe these "leap" seconds were happening regularly all along, and there's been no way to measure them accurately until now.

[Edim]

21. Dumb article, dumb tweet.

Length of the day (LOD) fluctuations is old news.

"The length of the day (LOD), which has increased over the long term of Earth's history due to tidal effects, is also subject to fluctuations on a shorter scale of time. Exact measurements of time by atomic clocks and satellite laser ranging have revealed that the LOD is subject to a number of different changes. These subtle variations have periods that range from a few weeks to a few years. They are attributed to interactions between the dynamic atmosphere and Earth itself. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service monitors the changes."


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_length_fluctuations

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. Well, the point is that the 'fluctuations' are trending in the opposite direction

to the long-term lengthening of days that has happened over millions of years. The Wikipedia graph shows the shortest day since the accurate measurements as about 1.4ms under 86400s, but now we've had 1.59ms under. The trend is visible since 1970.

"Shortest day ever" is bad, though; "shortest in the last 60 years" is accurate.

[rictofen]

23. The Earth will be surprised to hear that

Perhaps CBS News could expound on this exciting new theory that this is the fastest that the Earth has ever rotated.

[fescuerescue]

24. meh. I think the IT impact will be minimal

We will need a patch to NTP systems (network time protocol) so that instead of going backwards, it just holds the same time for a second.

Most all IT systems are driven off NTP clocks now, which get their time from NIST's atomic clocks. Only a minority of systems did this back in 2000.

Few systems require 1 second resolution.

I wouldn't recommend any rocket launches during adjustment time, and some red light tickets will have to be thrown out of court if they occur during the "magic second". But I'm having a hard time naming additional examples.

It looks like we lost 1.59 miliseconds. A negative leap second is 1,000 milliseconds so we have time before it's needed.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. I would hope no patch is needed; they ought to have the code for a 59 second minute already

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P3hjCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA109 says the Leap Indicator is already a 2 bit field to allow both a 61 second and 59 second minute adjustment.

I would suggest trading stocks should be done carefully at the moment of omission, or financial transactions in general.

[fescuerescue]

31. Nice. That's even easier

[treestar]

25. thanks Obama

[Hermit-The-Prog]

27. Pretty soon, we'll all have to wear velcro suits like they do Down Under.

[ForgedCrank]

30. I get irritated

when they inject the scare BS into this stuff.
This will have no effect on IT systems at all. Timekeeping is a completely automated process and is adjusted continually in almost every enterprise.

[fescuerescue]

33. Same

Stock trading and rocket launching requires sub 1 second resolution. But very little else.

Pretty much all IT systems pull their time nowadays via NTP from NIST.

So we just do the -leap second on a banking holiday and hold off from launching rockets that hour or day.

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. To give them their due, they do link to the Meta (Facebook) blog which describes the problems

Reddit and Cloudflare have had outages at leap seconds. "Completely automated", "adjusted continually" and "almost every enterprise" point to the dangers well; it requires well-written software, in all enterprises, with no interruption. We all know that in the real world, none of those things happen perfectly.

The blog describes the varying approaches organizations take, and it does look like there's plenty of room for errors.

https://engineering.fb.com/2022/07/25/production-engineering/its-time-to-leave-the-leap-second-in-the-past/

[tavernier]

32. Does that mean I can only hit my snooze button one time?

Or I could make it up in the shower by only soaping up one side.
Sigh. I’m not really good at time management. I need a astrophysicist to advise me. Is Brian May available?

[KY_EnviroGuy]

35. Obviously, we've put far too much caffeine in the rivers and oceans.

Time for everyone to go on decaff for a few years or else we'll need to sequester our pee in deep underground caverns.


KY.......... ....... .......

[JHB]

36. Clickbait. Tidal drag by the moon has been slowing the earth's spin...

...since the two of them formed. The effect of Earth, being much larger and more massive, on the moon was even more pronounced, slowing its rotation to the point where it is tidally locked (rotation time = revolution time, so that one side always faces us).

The day was several hours shorter in ages past (don't recall off the top of my head whether that was in the age of the dinosaurs, or even farther back).