The year 2020 will be remembered for many things, most of them unpleasant, but it will also be remembered for being one of the fastest recorded, as a result of the acceleration rate of our planet. If this trend continues, it could lead to an “unprecedented negative jump.”
Our clocks fall out of sync, but instead of running as slowly as usual, they start running a little faster. The reason for this has to do with the staggering number of short days seen last year, the result of our planet’s ever-accelerating productivity. so a little. As Time and Date reports, Was the shortest 28 days in 2020 since 1960.
It takes 24 hours on Earth, or 86,400 seconds, to make a complete orbit around its axis, which scientists refer to as the average solar day. The term “mean” is important, however, as there are slight differences each day. This became apparent in the 1960s with the development of atomic timekeeping. Atomic clocks Earth’s spinning dimension compared to a distant celestial object, usually a fixed star. Scientists have learned that the length of one day can shift by a few million million (ms), in which 1 ms equals 0.001 seconds.
The variability in the spinning of our planet isn’t going to bother you, and you certainly don’t have to hold on to your cup in case you move inward. place. The variability of the Earth’s rotational speed is normal, and is influenced by factors such as the melting core of our planet, oceans, winds, and atmospheric pressure.
T.o be clear, we are talking about very small numbers. Today, for example, is expected to last for 24 hours, 0 minutes, and 0.0792 ms, but yesterday lasted for 24 hours, 0 minutes, and 0.2561 ms, according to to Time and Date, a website run by journalists and researchers. That’s a difference of 0.1769 ms, so, yeah, minumaterial scule. Some days can be somewhat unusual, however, such as July 5, 2005, when the Earth’s rotation was 1.0516 ms less than the average sunny day.
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The year 2020 was a remarkable one in this respect, surpassing the 2005 record at least 28 times. The shortest of these was on July 19, when the Earth’s rotation was 1.4602 ms below the average day of the sun.
Interestingly, we can expect more of the same in 2021. “[A]the average day in 2021 will be 0.05 ms shorter than 86,400 seconds, ” reports Time and Date, which means that, over the whole year, “atomic clocks will have accumulated a weakening of about 19 ms. ”
These clocks typically run at a speed of a few hundred million miles a year, requiring jump jump in second place to keep clocks in sync.
“The second jump is the second to be added to Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) to keep it parallel to celestial time,” according to to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. “UTC is an atomic time scale, based on the performance of atomic clocks that is more stable than the Earth’s rotation rate.”
This was the last time this happened in 2016. Jump seconds are usually added at midnight on New Year’s Eve, so if you were celebrating at the time and you didn’t wait for an extra full second, you arrived in 2017 a little ahead of time.
We didn’t have to attack him a second jump from 2016, and as the Earth ‘s momentum accelerates, we may have to do something we have never done before, and that is what we need to do. take away full seconds. In other words, a negative jump takes second place.
This action would serve the same purpose as a positive jump in the second, which is to keep UTC with our atomic clocks. That said, the International Service of Global Circulation and Reference Systems, which decides on these issues, for now without plans to do that.
It could happen, however. And if at some point we have to make a negative jump, you can give your friends a good idea by using in the new year just one second before everyone else. You’re welcome.