{"id":120820,"date":"2025-09-07T13:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T13:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120820\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T13:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T13:19:10","slug":"scientists-reveal-exactly-what-will-happen-if-the-earth-continues-to-spin-faster-including-devastating-earthquakes-and-catastrophic-flooding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120820\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists reveal exactly what will happen if the Earth continues to spin faster – including devastating earthquakes and catastrophic flooding"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may already feel as if there\u2019s not enough time in the day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it’s not just your imagination \u2013 the days have been getting shorter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to scientists,\u00a0July 9, July 22 and August 5 this year were between 1.3 and 1.51 milliseconds shorter than the standard 24-hour day<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although the exact reason is still a mystery, there could be several causes, such as changes in the atmosphere, the melting of glaciers, motion in the Earth’s core, and a weakening magnetic field.<\/p>\n

While the loss of a few\u00a0milliseconds is not a cause for too much concern, a frightening new book imagines a\u00a0world literally ‘spinning out of control’.<\/p>\n

In ‘Circular Motion’ by Alex Foster,\u00a0days on Earth last 23 hours, then 20 hours, and then eventually two hours.<\/p>\n

Like a supercharged spinning top, the planet spins so fast that even gravity loses its grip,\u00a0as the sun rises and sets ever faster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, experts reveal the real implications of such a terrifying scenario, from large-scale disasters, floods and earthquakes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"In \"You <\/p>\n

A new novel called ‘Circular Motion’ by Alex Foster imagines a world literally spinning out of control, until a day last just two hours\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Foster’s new novel, Earth’s rotation speeds up due to a network of massive aircraft that orbit the Earth at 30,000 feet, revolutionising global transportation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The acceleration of Earth\u2019s spin begins gradually, and days are just a few seconds shorter than normal, so nobody initially notices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, Earth\u2019s spin progressively gets faster and faster until a day lasts just two hours \u2013 triggering a global catastrophe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Earth’s spin really did get faster, experts say it cause a ‘centrifugal effect’ where the things start to swing away from the planet’s axis, much like the hanging chairs on a spinning carousel ride.<\/p>\n

Earth’s oceans would start to bulge around the equator, giving the planet more of a diamond shape, with sloping\u00a0northern and southern hemispheres.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Water pulled from the polar regions (where centrifugal force is low) would cause the Arctic Ocean to become shallower and send the\u00a0equatorial region underwater.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even land around the equator that’s not underwater could have a greatly increased chance of tsunamis and flooding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Duncan Agnew, professor of geophysics at the University of California San Diego, said the ‘largest changes would be in the ocean tides’.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"This <\/p>\n

This long-exposure photo of the northern night sky above the Nepali Himalayas shows the apparent paths of the stars as Earth rotates. If Earth spun fast enough, is this what we would see?<\/p>\n

\"According <\/p>\n

According to scientists, July 9, July 22 and August 5 this year were between 1.3 and 1.51 milliseconds shorter than the standard 24-hour day . Although the exact reason is still a mystery, there could be several causes, such as changes in the atmosphere, the melting of glaciers, motion in the Earth’s core, and a weakening magnetic field (stock image)<\/p>\n

Could the world keep going faster? <\/p>\n

It is unlikely that the world will start to spin faster. In fact, the world is actually slowing down over time.<\/p>\n

About 4.4 billion years ago, the planet was spinning so fast that days lasted four minutes. But this slowed down after a large object hit Earth and created the moon.<\/p>\n

The only way Earth could speed up is if a large object hits at just the right angle. But this would likely liquify the planet’s crust, so no humans would survive to see the results.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Advertisement<\/p>\n

As any beach-goer knows, in coastal areas around the world there are high tides and low tides, which are due to the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun<\/a>,\u00a0combined with the rotation of Earth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The daily rotation of the Earth produces two high tides and two low tides every 24 hours and 50 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Change that by 10 per cent and the tides in some places would get larger and in others smaller,’ Professor\u00a0Agnew told the Daily Mail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, the faster the Earth’s spin, the faster tectonic plates would move, would could add to more geological stress and ‘a lot of earthquakes’, the academic added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth remembering that the equator (where Earth\u2019s circumference is the widest) spins faster than elsewhere, such as the tropics or the poles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The equator spins at about 1,025 miles (1,650km) per hour, while the poles spin barely above zero miles per hour.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As Earth spins and we go around with it, we are held into place by gravity, but if the Earth spun fast enough, centrifugal force would overcome gravity, causing objects to be flung into space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘The faster Earth turns, the more gravity will be canceled out and the lighter you\u2019ll feel,’\u00a0said Foster in a piece for\u00a0New Scientist<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Hurricanes <\/p>\n

Hurricanes will spin faster and carry more energy if the world’s spin greatly increases, researchers claim. In this picture from space, a swirling hurricane forms<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The faster Earth’s spin, the faster tectonic plates would move, would could add to more geological stress and ‘a lot of earthquakes’. Pictured, damage from Afghanistan earthquake, September 4, 2025<\/p>\n

NASA astronomer Dr Sten Odenwald also warned that weather phenomena would become more extreme, capable of causing more damage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the planet spins faster, an apparent force known as the Coriolis effect, which gives hurricanes their spin, intensifies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Hurricanes will spin faster and carry more energy,’ Dr Odenwald said.<\/p>\n

If Earth\u2019s spin increased, there would of course also be both less sunlight in the day and less time to sleep at night, which might make humans less productive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

People would have keep putting their clocks back as the days shortened, or come up with a whole new time-keeping system.<\/p>\n

Humans have a ‘circadian rhythm’ \u2013 an\u00a0internal clock that is closely attuned to the 24-hour day \u2013 which can cause physical and mental issues if disrupted (by factors like plane travel).<\/p>\n

Additionally, many satellites would no longer be positioned correctly, which could disrupt satellite communications, internet, TV broadcasting and more.<\/p>\n

Luckily, Professor\u00a0Agnew said the idea of Earth’s rotation speeding up to the extent portrayed in the new novel is a ‘particularly absurd premise’.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Each <\/p>\n

Each day on Earth contains 86,400 seconds, but the rotation isn’t uniform, which means over the course of a year, each day has a fraction of a second more or less<\/p>\n

‘This cannot happen and nothing like it has ever been observed for any planet or star,’ Professor Agnew told the Daily Mail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In actual fact, the Earth has been rotating more and more slowly over the long-term, but this change has been very gradual.<\/p>\n

‘A billion years ago the day was maybe 19 hours long,’ he told the Daily Mail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘If you went back to when there were dinosaurs and didn’t have a clock you wouldn’t probably notice that the day was 30 minutes shorter.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Judah Levine, Fellow of the US government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland, also questioned how close the book’s premise is to ‘real physics’.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘If the story is loosely connected to reality, then the speed-up of Earth had to be accompanied by something else losing angular momentum, maybe the orbit of the moon,’ he told the Daily Mail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘This is a fundamental principle.’<\/p>\n

Maybe the orbit of the moon losing angular momentum could cause the speed-up of Earth, he added.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘If that is what happens, the moon gets a lot closer, and the tidal effects become much stronger and more frequent because the periods are driven by the length of the day.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

Is Earth’s rotation really speeding up? <\/p>\n

\u00a0Earth normally takes 24 hours, or exactly 86,400 seconds, to complete one full rotation, which is called a solar day.<\/p>\n

The fastest day recorded so far was one year ago on July 5, 2024, when Earth spun 1.66 milliseconds faster than the standard 24 hours.<\/p>\n

According to scientists,\u00a0July 9, July 22 and August 5 this year were between 1.3 and 1.51 milliseconds shorter than the standard 24-hour day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earth’s rotation has never been perfect, as it shifts by tiny amounts throughout time, getting a few milliseconds faster or slower.<\/p>\n

However, scientists didn’t start keeping exact records of these changes until the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Scientists observe the phenomenon on atomic clocks –\u00a0incredibly accurate machines that keep time by measuring the vibrations of atoms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Natural forces like climate change may be playing a role in the planet’s spin.<\/p>\n

Weather patterns like El Ni\u00f1o and the accelerated melting of glaciers in summer may literally be throwing the planet out of balance by a tiny degree.<\/p>\n

Another reason for this sudden change could be shifting molten layers in the core. Earth is not solid all the way through. Its core is made of hot, swirling liquid metal.<\/p>\n

As that molten metal moves, it can change the planet’s shape and balance.<\/p>\n

Scientists are looking at all these pieces together, the moon’s orbit, core activity, ocean flow, and wind patterns, to figure out what’s going on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You may already feel as if there\u2019s not enough time in the day.\u00a0 But it’s not just your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[97,125,59,90,124,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-120820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-earth","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-sciencetech","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}