According to the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), the Earth began to spin faster, setting a record. The planet rotated around its axis 1.59 milliseconds faster.
At the moment, scientists do not know exactly what influenced the speed of the planet’s rotation.
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Subscribe to the NewsletterAccording to them, the change in speed will have a negative impact on the operation of all navigation systems, as well as computers, smartphones and communication systems on the planet.
The negative leap second will affect IT systems. This is because a clock usually runs from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 before resetting to 00:00:00.
If a leap second occurs, the clock will change from 23:59:58 to 00:00:00, which Meta predicts could have a “devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers.”
The speed of the planet has been measured since 1973, scientists recognize this metric using atomic clocks and thus establish the amount of time it takes the Earth to complete a rotation around its axis.
Some researchers have suggested that the increased pace of rotation and shortened days could be related to the Chandler wobble–a small deviation in the Earth’s axis of rotation.
“This is similar to the quiver one sees when a spinning top starts gaining momentum or slows down,” stated scientists Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard, and Nikolay Sidorenkov.
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