The Earth Is Now Spinning Faster, Is It A Sign Of The End Of The World Soon? Here's The Answer!

The Earth is spinning faster than it was 50 years ago. (photo credit: pixabay)

JAKARTA - The Earth is currently rotating faster than it was half a century ago. If it keeps spinning ever faster, scientists say they may have to remove a second from the atomic clock.

The speed at which our planet rotates on its axis has varied throughout history. In fact, the Earth rotated 420 times per year millions of years ago, but now it does so 365 times.

However, sometimes the rotation speed is slightly different, which affects the global timekeeper - atomic clock - which requires leap seconds to add up when the world goes a little faster.

Now, British National Physical Laboratory scientist Peter Whibberley has warned that if the rotation rate increases any further, a negative leap second may be required.

Each day on Earth contains 86.400 seconds, but the rotation is not uniform, which means that over the course of a year, each day has more or less a fraction of a second. This is caused by the movement of the Earth's core, oceans and atmosphere, and the pull of the Moon.

Atomic clocks are very precise, and measure time by the movement of electrons in atoms that have been cooled to absolute zero.

So, to keep the atomic clock in line with the number of seconds in Earth's rotation, leap seconds have been added every 18 months or so since 1972.

There has never been a negative leap second - the removal of one second from atomic clocks - and the systems designed to make that work have never been tested.

The idea emerged last year, when rotation started to accelerate, but has since slowed down again, with the average day in 2021 0.39 milliseconds less than in 2020.

"Over time, there is a gradual difference between atomic clock time and the time measured by astronomy," Judah Levine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology told Discover Magazine.

'To keep the difference from becoming too large, in 1972, the decision was made to periodically add leap seconds to atomic clocks.'

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service is responsible for tracking how fast the Earth is rotating, and does so by sending laser beams to satellites and using them to measure their movement.

When this doesn't line up with atomic clocks, scientists coordinate to stop their clocks for one second to get them back on track.

“The rate of rotation of the Earth is a complicated business. This has to do with the exchange of angular momentum between the Earth and the atmosphere and the ocean effect and the moon effect," Levine explained, quoted by Dailymail.

"You can't predict what will happen very far in the future," he added

There hasn't been a leap second added to atomic clocks since 2016, and while Earth is speeding up again, it's starting to slow down again in 2021. "This lack of need for leap seconds was not expected," Levine said.

He added that it was assumed the Earth would continue to slow down, 'so this effect,' he said, was 'very surprising.'

How long the slowing speed and trend will continue may require scientists to take further action, but it's not yet clear what might happen.

"There's a concern right now that if Earth's rotation rate increases any further, we may need to have what's called a negative leap second," Whibberley told Discover Magazine.

"In other words, instead of putting in an extra second to allow Earth to catch up, we should take a second off the atomic timescale to bring it back to a state with Earth."

While they know how they can make it work, scientists aren't clear on whether their system will work in reality, or what the impact will be.

The Internet relies on a steady flow of time, measured via atomic clocks, and different web companies use different processes whether leap seconds.

For example, Google uses a system that divides extra time throughout the year, into every second of the year. “The main backbone of the internet is continuous time,” explains Levine.

He adds that when there is no fixed time, the constant feed of information will fall apart.

Levine says leap seconds - added or removed - may not be worth the hassle, as in total they will only add up to about a minute over 100 years.