The Earth Just Started Spinning Faster than Ever Before and Scientists Don’t Know Why

Laura

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The Earth recently completed a rotation faster than ever before at 1.59 millisecond under 24 hours, and the consequences for how we keep time have experts around the world alarmed.

It could be the first time in world history that global clocks will have to be sped up.

“This would be required to keep civil time—which is based on the super-steady beat of atomic clocks—in step with solar time, which is based on the movement of the Sun across the sky,” Time and Date reported.

Scientists don’t know what is causing our planet to spin faster than ever before, but some experts fear it could be “devastating,” while others speculate the shorter days could be related to climate change, of course.

Since the Earth’s rotation has always largely been slowing down throughout time, atomic clocks have thus far only added positive leap seconds to keep up. 27 leap seconds have been needed to keep atomic time accurate since the 1970s.


However, it just emerged that on June 29, the Earth recorded its shortest day since scientists began using atomic clocks to measure its rotation, in what was only the latest of speed records set for our planet since 2020. It even came close again more recently on July 26, having completed a rotation in 1.5 milliseconds under 24 hours.

“A negative leap second would mean that our clocks skip one second, which could potentially create problems for IT systems,” the Time and Date website warned.

Meanwhile, Meta warned in a blog post last month that adding a negative leap second could have consequences for smartphones, computers and communications systems.

Citing Meta’s blog, the Independent reported that the leap second would “mainly benefits scientists and astronomers” but that it is a “risky practice that does more harm than good.”

Meta also warned that by adding a negative leap second, clocks will change from 23:59:58 to 00:00:00, and that this could have an unintended “devastating effect” on software relying on timers and schedulers.

“The impact of a negative leap second has never been tested on a large scale; it could have a devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers,” Meta said.

This is due in part to the fact that time moving forward is seen as a constant in most technological systems.

If the internal clocks of these IT systems ever have to be adjusted backwards to account for an abnormally fast rotation of the Earth, widespread disruptions and massive outages are to be expected.

Time and Date suggests that the diminishing length of the shortest days may be related to Earth’s “inner or outer layers, oceans, tides, or even temperature,” although experts aren’t sure.

Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard, and Nikolay Sidorenkov will argue at the upcoming annual meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society this week that the Earth’s rotation speeding up may be related to the ‘Chandler wobble,’ the term given to the small and irregular movement of the geographical poles across the surface of the globe.

Experts say the ‘Chandler Wobble’ – a change in the spin of the Earth on its axis – may be to blame.

“The normal amplitude of the Chandler wobble is about three to four meters at Earth’s surface,” Zotov told Time and Date, adding: “But from 2017 to 2020 it disappeared.”

The International Earth Rotation Service in Paris, which tracks the planet’s rotation, will notify governments six months in advance if and when leap seconds must be added or removed.

As for whether or not the Earth will keep spinning faster and faster as the days continue to get shorter, nobody knows.
 
Very interesting find, thanks for sharing, Laura.

Something is up, I can feel it. There is something going on with the energies but I can explain it. I feel it in my body in a way that it's working faster in a way. Pulse, tension, just general unrestfulness I guess. I don't know if what's presented in this article is related to it but the advice for daily grounding makes more sense every day now.

Take good care of yourself, all of you :)
 
SOTT published the story from a different source.

So is the world speeding up? Over the longer term - the geological timescales that compress the rise and fall of the dinosaurs into the blink of an eye - the Earth is actually spinning more slowly than it used to. Wind the clock back 1.4bn years and a day would pass in less than 19 hours.
...

While the Earth is slowing down over the longer term, the situation is messier on shorter timescales.

 
Something is up, I can feel it. There is something going on with the energies but I can explain it. I feel it in my body in a way that it's working faster in a way. Pulse, tension, just general unrestfulness I guess. I don't know if what's presented in this article is related to it but the advice for daily grounding makes more sense every day now.
You might want to read up about this phenomenon, called by the C's a quickening of the cosmos.

Some references:
Session June 20, 2009
Session May 18, 2019
High Strangeness and Quickening of the Cosmos: Madness All Around Us -- Sott.net
 
And I've been wondering why does the day feel shorter than before... :)

"Scientists don’t know what is causing our planet to spin faster than ever before, but some experts fear it could be “devastating,” while others speculate the shorter days could be related to climate change, of course."
If somehow this goes on tv, Climate change it is then...
 
I would like to add a metaphysical aspect, because "the quickening of the cosmos" is a sign of the times and transition to 4D

In the past Laura has talked to us about the possibility that the consciousness of a network can speed up or slow down the Earth.

This was said by Laura when the twin sun approach was being discussed. The Cs said: "Distance depends upon other factors, such as intersecting orbit of locator of witness."
"You on Earth. Earth can be on opposite side of sun at time of closest approach."

As the discussion that followed shows, we don't know what kinds of things can affect these things; it is altogether possible that consciousnesses in a network can create a "skip" of the earth, so to say. Or speed it up or slow it down infinitesimally which, in cosmic terms, can work out to thousands of miles of "miss distance".

Perhaps this adds a bit to the idea of "It's not where you are, but who you are and what you see" - as a WITNESS.

Could it be that people in this forum, aware of earth changes and the approaching of the twin sun, are metaphysically causing this acceleration, in order to experience the transition in a different way? Creating a new reality together?

Furthermore, the Cs have said: "another possibility is that physical cataclysms will occur only for those "left behind" on the remaining 3rd level density earth."

: (L) When the energy changes to 4th density, and you have already told us that people who are moving to 4th density when the transition occurs, that they will move into 4th density, go through some kind of rejuvenation process, grow new teeth, or whatever, what happens to those people who are not moving to 4th density, and who are totally unaware of it? Are they taken along on the wave by, in other words, piggy-backed by the ones who are aware and already changing in frequency, or are they going to be somewhere else doing something else?

A: Step by step.

Q: (T) In other words, we are looking at the fact that what's coming this time is a wave that's going to allow the human race to move to 4th density?

A: And the planet and your entire sector of space/time.

Q: (T) Is that what this whole plan is about, then, if I may be so bold as to include all of us here in this. We, of the beings of light who have come here into human form, to anchor the frequency, is this what we are anchoring it for, for this wave, so that when it comes enough of us will be ready, the frequency will be set, so that the change in the planet can take place as it has been planned?

A: Yes.

Q: (L) When this happens, will we piggy-back all those who are still unaware?

A: Open.

Q: (T) Okay, when the people are talking about the earth changes, when they talk in literal terms about the survivors, and those who are not going to survive, and the destruction and so forth and so on, in 3rd, 4th, 5th level reality we are not talking about the destruction of the planet on 3rd level physical terms, or the loss of 90 per cent of the population on the 3rd level because they died, but because they are going to move to 4th level?

A: Whoa! You are getting "warm."

Q: (T) Okay. So, we are anchoring this. So, when they talk about 90 per cent of the population not surviving, it is not that they are going to die, but that they are going to transform. We are going to go up a level. This is what the whole light thing is all about?

A: Or another possibility is that the physical cataclysms will occur only for those "left behind" on the remaining 3rd level density earth.

Even Matthew suggests this possibility when he speaks of the shortening of the days for the benefit of the elected.

Matthew 24:22, KJV: And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.
Context Summary
Matthew 24:15–28 begins with a warning to all in Jerusalem to flee to the mountains when the abomination that will bring desolation to the temple stands in the holy place. This will be a terrible time, especially for those who are particularly vulnerable. That tribulation will be worse than anything ever, though another tribulation will come right before Jesus' return. It will be cut short to save some of humanity and for the sake of the elect, all those who truly believe in Christ. When He returns, everyone will know. Bible reference

I think this macrocosmic acceleration is also happening and affecting our lives. Maybe one perceives time differently with age, but now it is common among younger people to talk about how fast time is going.
 
You might want to read up about this phenomenon, called by the C's a quickening of the cosmos.

Some references:
Session June 20, 2009
Session May 18, 2019
High Strangeness and Quickening of the Cosmos: Madness All Around Us -- Sott.net

I saw a video on Twitter this morning that reflects what the Cs said about the quickening of the cosmos and about the hyperkinetic effects of the wave. Frank mentions "sometimes I think the whole world's gone insane".

Q: (L) Well, in that respect, there's also some other things that are very strange that are going on. For example, I would like to know what is going on with D****? D**** has been writing us many e-mails that are more or less incoherent. We tried at one point to communicate with him and to persuade him that he needed to get counseling, to do something, and I don't know whether he has or whether he hasn't. But he seems to be mentally deteriorating. At the same time, I also got an e-mail today from a former member of the forum, and he has also been a member of QFS for a very short time, although he never participated - or very little - over a period of a couple of years. But anyhow, he says his name is M**** (Arabic name), and he says he lives in {Middle Eastern Country}, but his IP address points to Washington DC. His e-mails are very similar to D***'s: fairly incoherent, and actually threatening. I mean, reading his e-mail, I thought this was strange. If your name is M**** in this day and age, you don't go around vaguely threatening somebody with end of the world scenarios saying that something big is gonna happen. Nevertheless, that's what he did. And I would like to know is there any relationship between the apparent deterioration of the minds of these two people? {Added note: the similarity of writing styles actually made us think for awhile that it might be the same person. The best way to describe it is schizophrenic ideation.}

A: Yes.

Q: (L) What is the relationship?

A: It is not just "waves" beamed by such things as HAARP or microwaves, it is also a quickening of the cosmos. Those who are not integrated will disintegrate at an even faster rate than ever.

Q: (L) Are there any kinds of negative spirits or attachments involved here?

A: Not necessary when the personality is so fragmented.

Q: (L) Alright then. Is there anything that we could do?

A: Perhaps if you could share the technique that you used to achieve emotional cleansing, a lot of people would benefit including the two individuals in question.

Other examples of the fragmentation of the personality

 
The Earth recently completed a rotation faster than ever before at 1.59 millisecond under 24 hours, and the consequences for how we keep time have experts around the world alarmed.
From Forbes:
Our planet set a record for completing one rotation faster than scientists had ever previously recorded, according to TimeAndDate.com. Earth rotated once around its axis on Wednesday, June 29, in 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours.
From TimeAndDate.com
It could be related to processes in Earth’s inner or outer layers, oceans, tides, or even climate. Scientists are not sure, and struggle to make predictions about the length of day more than a year ahead. But there are tentative ideas.

At next week’s annual meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (presentation SE05_A009), Leonid Zotov—together with his colleagues Christian Bizouard and Nikolay Sidorenkov—will suggest the current decrease in the length of day could have some relation to the ‘Chandler wobble’.

Chandler wobble is the name given to a small, irregular movement of Earth’s geographical poles across the surface of the globe.

“The normal amplitude of the Chandler wobble is about three to four meters at Earth’s surface,” Dr Zotov told timeanddate, “but from 2017 to 2020 it disappeared.”
About the Chandler wobble:
The Chandler wobble or Chandler variation of latitude is a small deviation in the Earth's axis of rotation relative to the solid earth,[1] which was discovered by and named after American astronomer Seth Carlo Chandler in 1891. It amounts to change of about 9 metres (30 ft) in the point at which the axis intersects the Earth's surface and has a period of 433 days.[2][3] This wobble, which is an astronomical nutation, combines with another wobble with a period of one year, so that the total polar motion varies with a period of about 7 years.

The Chandler wobble is an example of the kind of motion that can occur for a freely rotating object that is not a sphere; this is called a free nutation. Somewhat confusingly, the direction of the Earth's rotation axis relative to the stars also varies with different periods, and these motions—caused by the tidal forces of the Moon and Sun—are also called nutations, except for the slowest, which are precessions of the equinoxes.
What is the size of the problem?
When the Earth spins faster, the angular velocity increases. If that happens, the rotational energy also increases.
Below are a few concepts and calculations to find out what that may mean. The result was that the change in terms of energy is comparatively small, but I can't tell you if that is because I made errors in the calculations, or because the changes really are small. Even if the changes are small, they may still be significant.

Angular velocity
From here on, I work with the number of 1.59 milliseconds shorter than a normal day

In general, angular velocity has dimension of angle per unit time (angle replacing distance from linear velocity with time in common). The SI unit of angular velocity is radians per second,[3] with the radian being a dimensionless quantity, thus the SI units of angular velocity may be listed as s−1. Angular velocity is usually represented by the symbol omega (ω, sometimes Ω). By convention, positive angular velocity indicates counter-clockwise rotation, while negative is clockwise.

For example, a geostationary satellite completes one orbit per day above the equator, or 360 degrees per 24 hours, and has angular velocity ω = (360°)/(24 h) = 15°/h, or (2π rad)/(24 h) ≈ 0.26 rad/h. If angle is measured in radians, the linear velocity is the radius times the angular velocity, v=rω
Using the above formula, Earth radius given as 6378.137 km or 6.378137 x 10^6 m as our r and instead of hours we use seconds, we obtain the angular velocity at the equator in meters/second as:
v=rω
v= 6.3781×10^6 m x (2π/86400)
v= 6.3781×10^6 m x 7.2722 x 10^-5/s
v= 463.82 m/s
463.8 meters per second means that in one millisecond, the Earth would rotate 0,46382 meters. In 1.59 millisecond, less than 0.74 meters. That is not much. Comparing 1.59 millisecond to the duration of a day with 86400 seconds give1.59/86,400,000 which is 1.84 e-8 or 1.84 x 10^-8 which is 18.4 x 10^-9, so the day was 18 billionth of a normal day shorter. That is also not much.

What about the rotational energy when the rotational velocity of the Earth changes?
The kinetic energy of an object, like a car with a mass, m, moving straight with a speed v is ½mv^2 or half the mass times the velocity squared. The Earth has kinetic energy from moving around the Sun with a certain speed, but what happens to the rotational energy. In the calculation of the kinetic energy of the rotational moment, one needs the angular velocity from before, and the moment of inertia.

The moment of inertia
In 10.4 Moment of Inertia and Rotational Kinetic Energy, they have this figure that compares the situation with a rotating body having rotational kinetic energy to that of a body moving in a straight line having translational kinetic energy:
Screenshot 2022-08-11 104913.jpg
Where the glossary has:
moment of inertia rotational mass of rigid bodies that relates to how easy or hard it will be to change the angular velocity of the rotating rigid body
rotational kinetic energy kinetic energy due to the rotation of an object; this is part of its total kinetic energy.
To use the formula for knowing the rotational energy, I will first work with the angular velocities and then with the moment of inertia.

Calculating the angular velocities for the normal and faster spinning Earth
We will also calculate the angular velocity with more accuracy as well as the squared value of the angular velocity
There was ω = (2π rad)/(24 h) so for the normal rotation the angular velocity was
ω= 2π rad/86,400.00000s=7.2722052166430399038487115353692e-5 /s
The above value squared:
ω^2 =
5.2884968712970242942142977322725e-9 /s^2
With the faster rotation of 1.59 milliseconds less, the angular velocity was:
with ω= 2π rad/(86,400.00000-0.00159s)
ω= 2π rad/86,399.99841= 7.2722053504718189229481569924013e-5 /s
and the corresponding value squared
ω^2= 5.2884970659430950691612263201613e-9 /s^2
Before progressing to calculate the rotational energy, we need to discuss the moment of inertia of a solid sphere:


What is the moment of inertia for the Earth?
The moment of inertia of a solid sphere is given as:

Screenshot 2022-08-11 103917.jpg
How to arrive at the above formula is explained in moment of inertia.
M in the formula is the Earth mass, which is 5.976 x 10^24 kg.
R in the formula would be the Earth radius given as 6378.137 km or 6.378137 x 10^6 m which is 40.680631590769 x 10^12 m^2
It is assumed that the mass is evenly distributed, though this is not the case, as water for example is lighter than soil, just as iron deeper in the Earth is more heavy though it rotates slower than the water and soil near the surface of the planet.
Looking for a value for the moment of inertia for the Earth,

Looking for a value, I came across Quora, and someone posted a suggestion to Science World by Eric W. Weisstein who lists.
Moment of Inertia - Earth
The Earth
Eric Weisstein's World of Astronomy
is roughly an oblate spheroid,
Eric Weisstein's World of Math
with the bulge occurring at the equator. Let A be the moment of inertia along an equatorial axis, and let C be the moment of inertia about the polar axis. Then Lambeck (1980) gives
A= 8,008 x 10^27 kg m^2
C= 8,034 x 10^27 kg m^2
while Stacy (1977) gives:
A= 8.012 x 10 ^27 kg m^2
C= 8.038 x 10 ^27 kg m^2
I will round the number down to 8 x 10^27 kg m^2 it is easy to work with and does not change much, as I am mostly interested in the difference.

Rotational energy for faster rotation and short day, using the squared values of the angular velocities found earlier:
We had K=1/2 I x ω^2. By inserting the values mentioned above:
K= 0.5 x 8.0 x 10^27 kg m^2 x 5.2884970659430950691612263201613e-9 /s^2 = 21,153,988,263,772,380,276.644905280645
~2.1153988263 x 10^19 J
Rotational energy for normal rotation in a normal day
K=1/2 I x ω^2
K=
0.5 x 8.0 x 10^27 kg m^2 x 5.2884968712970242942142977322725e-9 s^2 = 21,153,987,485,188,097,176.85719092909
~2.1153987485 x 10^19 J

The difference in rotational energy between fast and normal in kW hours
The rotational energy of a short day minus the rotational energy of a normal day:
(21,153,988,263,772,380,276.644905280645 - 21,153,987,485,188,097,176.85719092909) = 778,584,283,099.787714351555 ~0.7858 x 10^12 J
J is short for Joule. The Wiki has:
The joule (/ˈdʒaʊl/ JOWL, also /ˈdʒuːl/ JOOL;[1][2][3][disputeddiscuss] symbol: J) is a derived unit of energy in the International System of Units.[4] It is equal to the amount of work done when a force of 1 newton displaces a mass through a distance of 1 metre in the direction of the force applied. It is also the energy dissipated as heat when an electric current of one ampere passes through a resistance of one ohm for one second. It is named after the English physicist James Prescott Joule (1818–1889).[5][6][7]
One Joule is 2.78×10−7 kW⋅h so if I multiply with 0.7858 x 10^12, J then there was what corresponds to 218,452.4 kW⋅h more of rotational energy.

Comparing the increase in rotational energy to that of a normal day, using the original numbers 778,584,283,099.787714351555/21,153,987,485,188,097,176.85719092909 = 3.680555657154227029967396559414e-8 ~37 x 10^-9
So there was on the short day a mere 37 billionth more of rotational energy than on a normal day. Somehow it is not that much, is it? The course of rives change, the look of the mountains, the valleys, deserts, the coastline, the layout of the stars, the cosmic space around us also changing. What about time?

There are seasonal changes in the rotational speed
The article in TimeAndDate has this illustration:
1660234343768.png
June-July wins every year.

There is a Wiki on day length fluctuations, and they have this image:
1660234438200.png

Notice that here have been days around 1972 that were more than 4 ms slower than the norm. What will be the headlines if one day the Earth is 4 ms faster, considering that 1.59 ms is the record so far.

Older records show there have been ups and downs in the speed of rotation
In the Wiki there is mentioned a work by Kurt Lambeck from 2005. Lambeck and Amy Cazenave wrote a paper in 1976:
Long Term Variations in the Length of Day and Climatic Change that mentions:
The astronomical data and the excitation function Observations of the LOD go back to the seventeenth century and the most reliable data comes from observations of occultations of stars by the Moon from about 1820 onwards (Brouwer 1952). The most recent compilation and analysis of the available data is by Morrison (1973) and is based in part on the work of C. F. Martin. The observed quantity is the integrated amount τ by which the Earth is slow or fast compared with a uniform reference time. For observations before 1955 this reference time is ephemeris or Newtonian time, a scale based on the observed motions of the Sun, Moon and planets. The integration time is 1 yr. Variations in the LOD are related to the τ by Screenshot 2022-08-11 205228.jpg
where, by convention, τ is positive if the Earth is slow. The m represent variations in the speed of rotation with respect to the uniform time scale. From the annual τ values the m have been computed using a 3-point Lagrangian interpolation and computing the time derivative at the required epoch. Fig. 1 gives, 5 yr running, mean values of m.

Screenshot 2022-08-11 204921.jpg
As the above diagram represents 5-year means of the "variations in the speed of rotation with respect to the uniform timescale", they can't be directly compared with the modern measurements that work on the day-to-day basis showing deviation from the norm. However, even without a similar treatment, it is clear that there have been changes before.
 

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The Earth is spinning faster: What does this mean and how does it impact life?

The quickening rotation impacts various technologies on Earth, including the GPS satellites that use atomic clocks.

According to a report by Forbes, a faster spin would mean Earth gets the same position a little earlier than the previous day. A half-a-millisecond equates to 10-inches or 26 centimetres at the equator. In short, GPS satellites—which already have to be corrected for the effect of Einstein’s general relativity theory (the curve of space and time)—are quickly going to become useless.

It can also impact smartphones, computers and communication systems at large, which synchronise with Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers). It’s defined as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on 1 January, 1970.

To solve all this, international timekeepers may need to add a negative leap second— a “drop second.”


Within last week I saw GPS failure in a car and in a public transport bus in Munich. The bus driver himself announced it and had to change his route due to this failure. Might be related or not.
 
The Earth is spinning faster: What does this mean and how does it impact life?




Within last week I saw GPS failure in a car and in a public transport bus in Munich. The bus driver himself announced it and had to change his route due to this failure. Might be related or not.
No, but yes. The spinning faster won't affect GPS units positioning themselves relative to the satellites, but the cause of the Earth spinning faster is what also causes the GPS malfunctions - the earth's shield is weakening and as it does so, it gets increasingly affected by solar weather. We're at the point where solar watchers will find examples globally of blackouts, transformer, GPS and plane troubles for nearly every time we enter a KP5 storm or above.

And last week, around beginnimg of the week IRRC, we were in the middle of a solar storm after we were buffeted by that small trans-equatorial coronal hole that faced us during the weekend before.
1660652156006.png
Did you spot those anomalies on the 8th?
 
Below is a study using eclipses going back to 720 BC (prior to telescopic observations) from several cultures to infer data points in documenting rotational speed up to 2015.

Abstract​

New compilations of records of ancient and medieval eclipses in the period 720 BC to AD 1600, and of lunar occultations of stars in AD 1600–2015, are analysed to investigate variations in the Earth’s rate of rotation. It is found that the rate of rotation departs from uniformity, such that the change in the length of the mean solar day (lod) increases at an average rate of +1.8 ms per century. This is significantly less than the rate predicted on the basis of tidal friction, which is +2.3 ms per century. Besides this linear change in the lod, there are fluctuations about this trend on time scales of decades to centuries. A power spectral density analysis of fluctuations in the range 2–30 years follows a power law with exponent −1.3, and there is evidence of increased power at a period of 6 years. There is some indication of an oscillation in the lod with a period of roughly 1500 years. Our measurements of the Earth’s rotation for the period 720 BC to AD 2015 set firm boundaries for future work on post-glacial rebound and core–mantle coupling which are invoked to explain the departures from tidal friction.
Keywords: eclipses, occultations, length of day, tidal friction, core–mantle coupling, sea level
...

(a) Timescales and ΔT​

The independent argument of time in the gravitational theories of motion of Solar System bodies defines a theoretically uniform time scale, which is denoted by Terrestrial Time (TT). The time scale, based on the (variable) rotational period of the Earth, is denoted by Universal Time (UT). The difference (TT−UT) between the recorded times on UT of events, such as eclipses or occultations, and their predicted times on TT using the gravitational theories of their motion, is designated by ΔT. Since 1955.5, highly stable atomic clocks have provided an independent, uniform time scale (TAI), which is related to TT by

TT = TAI + 32.184 s.
1.1
The standard unit of time on the TT and TAI scales is the day of 86400 SI seconds exactly. The day on the UT scale is the mean solar day, which is derived from the (variable) period of the Earth’s rotation. Over a selected interval, the quantity ΔT is the cumulative difference in time between the fixed standard day and the variable mean solar day.
...

7. Conclusion​

Assuming that the measurement of tidal braking in the Earth–Moon–Sun system is secure, our main conclusion is that this mechanism alone does not account for the observed deceleration in rotation over the past 2700 years. A smaller accelerative component of +1.5±0.4×10−22 rad s−2 is also present, which is thought to arise from a combination of post-glacial rebound and core–mantle coupling.

 
This article, present how time is actually calculated/measured/"used" all over the world, extract :

Time Is Running Out for the Leap Second

Humanity struggles to impose order on the small end of the time scale, too. Lately the second is running into trouble. Traditionally the unit was defined in astronomical terms, as one-86,400th of the mean solar day (the time it takes Earth to rotate once on its axis). In 1967 the world’s metrologists instead began measuring time from the ground up, with atomic clocks. The official length of the basic unit, the second, was fixed at 9,192,631,770 vibrations of an atom of cesium 133. Eighty-six thousand four hundred such seconds compose one day.
But Earth’s rotation slows ever so slightly from year to year and the astronomical second (like the astronomical day) has gradually grown longer than the atomic one. To compensate, starting in 1972, metrologists began occasionally inserting an extra second — a leap second — to the end of an atomic day. In effect, whenever atomic time is a full second ahead, it stops for a second to allow Earth to catch up. Ten leap seconds were added to the atomic time scale in 1972, and 27 more have been added since.

Adding that extra second is no small task. Moreover, Earth’s rotation is slightly erratic, so the leap second is both irregular and unpredictable. Fifty years ago, those qualities made inserting the leap second difficult. Today the endeavor is a technical nightmare, because precise timing has become integral to society’s highly computerized infrastructure.

“What was before just a way of measuring the flow of time is today essential for transportation, location, defense, finance, space competition,” said Felicitas Arias, former director of the time department of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, known as B.I.P.M. from its French name and based outside Paris. “Time is ruling the world.”

The process of squaring these two time scales has become so unruly that the world’s time mavens are making a bold proposal: to abandon the leap second by 2035. Civilization would wholly embrace atomic time; and the difference, or tolerance, between atomic time and Earth time would go unspecified until timekeepers come up with a better plan for reconciling the two. A vote, in the form of Resolution D, is expected on Nov. 18 at a meeting in Versailles of the Bureau’s member nations.
“From a technical point of view,” said Patrizia Tavella, the current director of B.I.P.M.’s time department, “all the colleagues all over the world agree that we have to do something.”
(snip)
But the second is a huge amount of time in the technology of the internet. Cellphone transmissions, power grids and computer networks are synchronized to minuscule fractions of a second. High-frequency traders in financial markets execute orders in thousandths and even billionths of a second. By international law, data packages related to these financial transactions must be time-stamped to that fine level of precision, recorded and made traceable back to Coordinated Universal Time, the universally agreed-upon standard managed by the timekeepers at the B.I.P.M.
(snip)
Russia, for instance, has tried to delay a shift away from the leap second because doing so would require extensive alterations to its GLONASS satellite system, which incorporates the extra second. As a result, the resolution has been phrased to postpone any change until 2035. The United Kingdom, historically and emotionally tethered to the astronomical standard, enshrined in Greenwich Mean Time, has been reluctant to commit publicly.

Coordinated Universal Time, or U.T.C., is tenderly constructed from readings made by atomic clocks kept at national laboratories around the world. These clocks tick off, or “realize,” their best seconds and send the measurements to the B.I.P.M. There, timekeepers painstakingly assemble the readings — averaging, weighting, adjusting for discrepancies — into an ideal second for everyone everywhere to agree on and employ, occasionally adding leap seconds as needed. This assembly process takes time. And so once a month the Bureau publishes the perfect time in the form of a newsletter, called Circular T, that tells each national clock how much it diverges from the international standard, to help it improve its aim the following month.
(snip)
The kludge is so technically difficult for digital technology to incorporate that other, ersatz methods of timekeeping — unofficial, but free of leap seconds and easier to implement — have begun to displace U.T.C., according to a recent article in the journal Metrologia. To supporters of Resolution D, removing the leap second from U.T.C. would make the standard time scale friendlier to modern digital technology, at least in the century following 2035. Coordinated Universal Time would still be universal, just not coordinated with Earth time.

The time scale most commonly used in place of U.T.C. is the American government’s global-positioning satellite system, or GPS. Each satellite in the GPS network, which is operated and maintained by the U.S. Space Force, carries atomic clocks that provide time data, along with information about longitude, latitude and altitude.
Users of GPS, which include cellphone and data networks, can determine the time of day to within 100 billionth of a second, and the information is free and widely available. But it is neither funneled through the B.I.P.M. nor adjusted for leap seconds. The United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union recently suggested that telecommunication networks make GPS, rather than U.T.C., their official time because it does not incorporate leap seconds and therefore is an uninterrupted flow of time.
To metrologists the implications are grave: Although GPS keeps good time, using it rather than U.T.C. would mean that time would no longer be overseen by an organization that must abide by international agreements.
“The increasing use of signals from the GPS satellites effectively means that the U.S. military controls a primary source of international time signals with almost no oversight nationally or internationally,”
noted the Metrologia article, which was written by Dr. Levine, Dr. Tavella and Martin Milton, the director of the B.I.P.M.
Moreover, the clocks aboard satellites are inconsistent across systems. Russia’s GLONASS runs on U.T.C. (adjusted by three hours) and leap seconds, but the other satellite navigational systems do not, and they diverge from universal time by different amounts, depending on when they became operational. GPS and Galileo, the European system, are 18 seconds ahead of U.T.C. The Chinese system BeiDou is four seconds ahead. They each function well because they are internally consistent and because their divergence from U.T.C. can be tracked, but they are not traceable back to U.T.C.


Even computing systems that continue to insert the leap second do so in different ways. As a result, the time stamps required for commercial and financial transactions are sometimes out of whack during the adjustment period, risking system crashes and an occasional lack of traceability. Google smears the extra second across a whole day, while Meta, Alibaba and Microsoft each add the extra second in their own bespoke way. And according to the Metrologia paper, the number of errors in implementing the leap second is increasing over time.

“It is anarchy,” Dr. Tavella said.
An additional wrinkle looms. The leap second has been necessary because atomic time runs faster than Earth time. But that is changing: Earth’s rotation rate began speeding up right around the time the leap second was invented. This month or next, Earth time will catch up to atomic time. By about 2030, if the trend persists, Earth time will overtake atomic time by about a second — so metrologists will have to insert a negative leap second to keep the two time scales in sync.
In effect, a second will vanish. Such an experiment has never been tested on computer systems, and many metrologists fear a digital disaster. “The first time in the history of U.T.C. that a negative leap second occurs, and nobody knows what to do,”
(snip)
The Vatican, for instance, has argued for keeping the leap second, on existential grounds. Time “is a constant reminder of our mortality,” wrote the Rev. Pavel Gabor, an astrophysicist and the vice director of the Vatican Observatory Research Group in Tucson, Ariz., in “The Science of Time,” published in 2017.
 
Another periodicity of 1500 years in paleo climate events. Not sure if it correlates with the the LOD cycle I noted above except for both of them having a "mystery" 1500 year period. The study authors apparently are not aware of this but posit a cause outside the Earth system.

Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events
Many paleoclimatic data reveal a 1,500 year cyclicity of unknown origin. A crucial question is how stable and regular this cycle is. An analysis of the GISP2 ice core record from Greenland reveals that abrupt climate events appear to be paced by a 1,470-year cycle with a period that is probably stable to within a few percent; with 95% confidence the period is maintained to better than 12% over at least 23 cycles. This highly precise clock points to an origin outside the Earth system; oscillatory modes within the Earth system can be expected to be far more irregular in period.
...
While this mechanism explains how these events are triggered and how they evolve, it does not explain what the cause of the underlying cycle might be. There is some evidence that this cycle may also be present in the Holocene but does not trigger DO events then [Bond et al., 1997], possibly because the Atlantic ocean circulation is not close to a threshold in a warm climate [Ganopolski and Rahm- storf, 2001]. The so-called ‘‘little ice age’’ of the 16th – 18th century may be the most recent cold phase of this cycle. The origin of the ‘‘mystery 1,500 year cycle’’ is thus one of the key issues in climatology that needs to be explained.
...
While the earlier estimate of ±20% [Schulz, 2002] is consistent with a solar cycle (the 11-year sunspot cycle varies in period by ±14%), a much higher precision would point more to an orbital cycle. The closest cycle known so far is a lunar cycle of 1,800 years [De Rop, 1971], which cannot be reconciled with the 1,470- year pacing found in the Greenland data. The origin of this regular pacing thus remains a mystery.

 

Olivierlejardinier from above:​


The process of squaring these two time scales has become so unruly that the world’s time mavens are making a bold proposal: to abandon the leap second by 2035. Civilization would wholly embrace atomic time; and the difference, or tolerance, between atomic time and Earth time would go unspecified until timekeepers come up with a better plan for reconciling the two. A vote, in the form of Resolution D, is expected on Nov. 18 at a meeting in Versailles of the Bureau’s member nations.

They did it

Scientists and government representatives meeting at a conference in France voted on Friday to scrap leap seconds by 2035, the organization responsible for global timekeeping said.
 
There are seasonal changes in the rotational speed
The article in TimeAndDate has this illustration:
1660234343768.png

June-July wins every year.

There is a Wiki on day length fluctuations, and they have this image:
1660234438200.png


Notice that here have been days around 1972 that were more than 4 ms slower than the norm. What will be the headlines if one day the Earth is 4 ms faster, considering that 1.59 ms is the record so far.

'Seasonal changes' in length of day (LOD) are to be expected, because LOD is not a real measure of Earth's rotation (unlike sidereal rotation period), but combined with Earth's revolution around the Sun. The sidereal period of Earth's rotation is 23h 56min 4.2s, according to NASA's planetary factsheet (23.9345 hours), and that would also be LOD if Earth were to stand still (in its orbit) in relation to the Sun.

Since Earth's orbit around the Sun is not a circle, but an ellipse, it's angular velocity and linear speed are not constants throughout the year, but vary slightly depending on the distance to the Sun. According to Kepler’s 2nd law of planetary motion,
(2) A radius vector joining any planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal lengths of time.
Earth moves slower in its orbit around the middle of the calendar year when it's close to its aphelion than at the beginning of the year when it's near the perihelion and consequently speeds up its pace around the Sun.

Since slower orbital movement would bring LOD closer to sidereal rotational period (which is shorter than 1 day, i.e. less than 24h) it would explain why on those plots above the days were usually shorter than 24h around the mid year and why longer days would usually happen around the beginning (or the end) of the calendar year.

Putting it all together, shorter day than 24h on it's own could also mean that Earth at that time was moving slower than usually around the Sun (and vice versa with longer days) and its rotation around itself remained the same.
 
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