KONTAN.CO.ID – So far, scientists have defined the time of one day as 86,400 seconds or the equivalent of 24 hours, the time it takes Planet Earth to rotate once.
But in its history, the Earth did not rotate perfectly and uniformly like that time.
Historically, Earth’s rotation actually slowed so that the average day length increased by about 1.8 milliseconds per century. This means that 600 million years ago, the time of day only lasted 21 hours.
Launch Science Focus, Wednesday (2/6), variations in day length are caused by several factors, including tidal effects of the Moon and Sun, core-mantle coupling within Earth, and the overall mass distribution of the planet.
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Seismic activity, glaciation, weather, oceans, and the Earth’s magnetic field can also affect the length of the day.
In 2020 scientists made a surprising discovery. They found that, instead of slowing down, the Earth began to spin faster. Now it’s spinning faster than at any time in the last 50 years.
In fact, the record for the shortest 28 days all happened during 2020.
Until now, scientists weren’t entirely sure what caused this increase in Earth’s rotational rate, but some have suggested it could be due to melting glaciers during the 20th century, or the accumulation of large amounts of water in northern hemisphere reservoirs.
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