Earth Broke the Record for the Shortest Day since Atomic Clocks were Invented

Since the development of the Atomic Clocks, scientists have documented the shortest day ever on Earth. The International Earth Spin and Reference Systems Service, which is in charge of maintaining world time, said that our planet’s rotation was 1.59 milliseconds off the regular 24-hour day on June 29.

The time it takes the Earth to complete one complete revolution, or 84,600 seconds, is referred to as a rotation. On July 19, 2020, when the day was 1.47 milliseconds shorter than usual, the previous record was recorded. According to Dennis McCarthy, a retired director of time at the US Naval Observatory, the Atomic Clocks is a standardised unit of measurement that has been used to measure the Earth’s rotation and tell the time since the 1950s.

There have been days on Earth that have been considerably shorter, he noted, despite June 29 surpassing the record for the shortest day in contemporary history. According to a 2020 research published in Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, a single day on Earth when dinosaurs were still roaming the earth 70 million years ago lasted around 23 1/2 hours. According to NASA, scientists have observed a slowdown in the Earth’s rotation since 1820. It started accelerating a few years ago, according to McCarthy.

The tiny acceleration of Earth’s rotation is unknown to scientists, however it may be caused by glacial isostatic adjustment or the shifting of land owing to glacier melting. According to him, Earth is an oblate spheroid because it is broader than it is tall.