Maggie Harrison
WALL – Earth’s rotation is indeed starting to gain momentum.
As reported by CBS News, June 29 was the fastest day in recorded history, lasting 1.59 milliseconds less than the average 24 hours we are familiar with and embrace.
According to a recently published study, the Earth started spinning faster than before in 2016, and the average day lengths have shortened since then.
According to the authors of the new study, [dönüş hızındaki] the change was not enough to make each day shorter; but the resulting effect was obvious enough to attract the attention of the scientific community.
And if this trend continues—which is very likely to happen—experts suggest that some changes will need to be made in humanity’s atomic time, or the universal way of measuring time on Earth.
However, doing so will not be easy, especially if the tech industry does not want it done. Have you ever heard of the notorious ‘Y2K’* bug?
Historically speaking, Earth has never had a perfect timeline. From the magma core to ocean tides, a number of factors can have an impact on the Earth’s rotational speed. And, as the Guardian newspaper points out, our planet has actually been spinning somewhat slower in recent centuries than in the distant past.
While there are some different theories floating around, the study’s co-authors told CBS that they believe changes in ocean tides are most likely responsible for the recent rotational change.
When considering the issue of the ‘wrong’ flow of time, scientists advocate the inclusion of ‘negative leap seconds’ and demand artificially subtracting time from the world clock, rather than adding a clock to the flow, as we do in leap years.
However, this possible solution may present an entirely separate set of problems. The tech industry strongly opposes the inclusion of negative leap seconds, as it can damage system interfaces.
“The inclusion of negative leap seconds in time has long been supported, and companies like Meta often run simulations of this event,” Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagowi, engineers at Meta, told CBS. “However, this has never been confirmed on a large scale and will likely cause unpredictable and devastating disruptions around the world.”
In any case, if noticeably shorter days continue to occur, such as the recently recorded oddity, we will need to make a correction, and as with many things, we may not be entirely satisfied with what the solution will be.
*Y2K Error: When complex computer programs were first written in the 1960s, engineers used a two-digit code to represent years and excluded ’19. As the year 2000 approached, many believed that systems would not be able to interpret “00” correctly, thus causing a major glitch in the system.
Source: Futurism
Translated by: Tarkan Tufan
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