The Earth Is Spinning Faster

In modern decades, when the Earth’s rotation pace has slowed ever-so-slightly, leap seconds have been introduced intermittently to hold clocks up to date.

But if a current pattern holds, any day soon, time will need to be turned in the other direction. Science Times reported earlier this month that the Planet had achieved the highest spin rates in the past half-century. Peter Wibberley, a senior research scientist with the British National Physical Laboratory, told The Daily Telegraph that if the Earth’s rotation rate rises more, a negative leap second could be conceivable. According to the British media, the Earth’s rotation’s pace fluctuates continuously due to various causes, including shifting the center of the globe and seas. Scientists found the last leap second in 2016. According to the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, the next leap second remains unplanned. This does not sound like much, but it has major effects over time because atomic clocks used in GPS satellites do not consider the Planet’s evolving motion. It gets to the same location a little quicker if the World revolves faster. At the equator, a half-a-millisecond equals 10-inches or 26 centimeters. In brief, GPS satellites, which still have to be adjusted for the consequence of Einstein’s general relativity theory (space and time curve), would soon become useless.

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