{"id":18875,"date":"2025-07-24T15:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/18875\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T15:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:59:07","slug":"this-summer-has-seen-the-shortest-days-in-earths-recorded-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/18875\/","title":{"rendered":"This summer has seen the shortest days in Earth\u2019s recorded history"},"content":{"rendered":"

When time lost to shortened days begins to add up, timekeepers add an extra second to the running clock, bringing astronomical time back in sync with the atomic time it had lagged behind. This is called a\u00a0leap second<\/a>, and it\u2019s been implemented about every year and a half since 1972\u2014most people don\u2019t notice that either.<\/p>\n

Will a faster-spinning Earth affect technology or timekeeping?<\/p>\n

Slight changes to Earth\u2019s rotation didn\u2019t matter much until atomic timekeeping arrived in 1955<\/a>. Atomic time is constant, so Earth\u2019s varying spin creates a gap between astronomical and atomic time.<\/p>\n

To let astronomical time catch up,\u00a0leap seconds<\/a>\u00a0have been added 27 times since 1972. Now that Earth is speeding up\u00a0timekeepers may implement<\/a>\u00a0a first-ever negative leap second by 2029 to slow astronomical time.<\/p>\n

Leap seconds have plagued computers, GPS, and telecommunications,\u00a0most notably in 2012 when Linux and other systems\u00a0hiccuped at the adjustment<\/a>.\u00a0An unprecedented negative leap second could prove more problematic since software systems may assume that time always moves in the same direction. \u201cIt could have a devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers,\u201d\u00a0Meta engineers warn<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How climate change impacts Earth\u2019s rotation<\/p>\n

Studies suggest that factors like melting ice<\/a>, rising seas<\/a>, and\u00a0depleted groundwater<\/a> are changing Earth\u2019s mass and slowing its spin. This slows its rotation in the same way an ice skater lowers her arms from overhead\u00a0to stall her spin.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When time lost to shortened days begins to add up, timekeepers add an extra second to the running…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-18875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}