Earth Spins Mysteriously Fast on Tuesday; Experts Dish on Potentially Dangerous Effects

Earth is spinning mysteriously fast on Tuesday, August 5, making it the third shortest day of this summer. Normally, the Earth completes one full spin on its axis in 86,400 seconds, which equals exactly 24 hours, though there can be a difference of a millisecond or so.

However, on Tuesday, the Earth will complete one full rotation on its axis nearly 1.5 milliseconds faster than usual. This prediction was made by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service and the U.S. Naval Observatory.

According to experts, the reason for this phenomenon could be the moon’s position. When the position of this natural satellite is far to the south or north of the Earth’s equator, the planet’s spinning speed increases. But the scientists also warned about the potentially dangerous negative effects of this phenomenon.

“The cause of this acceleration is not explained. Most scientists believe it is something inside the Earth. Ocean and atmospheric models don’t explain this huge acceleration”, Leonic Zotov, Earth rotation expert from Moscow State University, said.

After Effects

A millisecond is considered less than the amount of time required to blink an eye, which could last around 100 milliseconds. That’s why the tiny time difference may not be imperceptible to humans. This phenomenon could lead to the first adjustment to the clock that is expected to be made in 2029.

Scientists fear that a normal day could shorten by two hours if the planet continues to rotate faster. It could result in several changes to humans’ internal clocks and potentially lead to dangerous weather patterns, like faster catastrophic hurricanes, according to NASA astronomer Dr. Sten Odenwald.

As the Earth spins faster, the diverging force may cause ocean water to shift towards the equator, resulting in a rise in sea levels and leading to floods in flatland, Daily Mail reported.

“This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal. It’s not a huge change in the Earth’s rotation that will lead to some catastrophe, but it is something notable. It’s yet another indication that we’re in a very unusual time,” Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said.

Shortest Days in Recorded History

The tiny day-to-day variations in Earth’s rotation speed are measured using atomic clocks, which have been used since the 1950s. Scientists calculate the length of a day by counting the number of milliseconds Earth takes to spin once on its axis.

Scientists found the blue planet creating a new record every year since 2020. Until 2020, the shortest recorded length of the day was -1.05 milliseconds. It means Earth completed a full rotation around the sun in 1.05 milliseconds less than 86,400 seconds. But the planet managed to break the record by half a millisecond every year.

Here are the Shortest Days Recorded in History Since 2020

• July 19, 2020 – 1.47 ms
• July 9, 2021 – 1.47 ms
• June 30, 2022 – 1.59 ms
• July 16, 2023 – 1.31 ms
• July 5, 2024 – 1.66 ms