Since 2020, Earth has been rotating unusually fast on its axis, leading scientists to consider whether we should correct for the shorter days.
recently. Last year on July 4, our planet set a record by completing a full spin 1.66 milliseconds faster than usual, according to. One year later, on July 10, 2025, Earth completed a daily rotation that scientists estimate was 1.
36 milliseconds faster than usual, giving us another particularly short day. Other shorter days occurred on July 9 and July 22, although the exact margins have Losing a couple milliseconds may seem insignificant to most of us—perhaps justifiably so. But tiny error margins in time can mess up systems that depend on extremely precise calculations, such as. As such, scientific timekeepers use highly sophisticated atomic clocks to set the standard via the Coordinated Universal Time . But with the recent acceleration in Earth’s rotation, the need for a “negative” leap second has re-emerged among some timekeeping experts., which they base on Earth’s rotation. A full day on Earth—the time it takes our planet to complete one full rotation on its axis—lasts for 86,400 seconds. But factors such as the Sun’s position, the Moon’s orbit, and Earth’s gravitational field influence how quickly the Earth completes its daily cycle. As a result, Earth’s rotation ends up being irregular, and slight differences between UTC and astronomical time can add up in the long run, causing a mismatch between the two. Leap seconds correct for this deviation. By the same logic, a negative leap second would subtract an extra second from UTC to account for the milliseconds we’re losing from Earth’s faster rotation. Now, this may seem perfectly reasonable, but not all scientists agree. In fact, some scientists found the leap second so problematic that, in 2020, an international group of experts As computing networks became more globally interconnected, the leap second began to cause “failures and anomalies in computing systems,” Patrizia Tavella, director of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures’ time department, toldin a 2022 interview. Moreover, countries account for leap seconds in different ways, causing major complications for airlines scheduling international flights, she said. Critics of the proposed negative leap second cite similar concerns. To be clear, no formal institution or body is currently advocating for the negative leap second. But should that happen, squeezing in the negative leap second to our timekeeping system will be difficult given the increasingly interconnected nature of our society, Darryl Veitch, a computer networking expert, explained to “There are continuing problems with the insertion of positive leap seconds even after 50 years,” Judah Levine, a physicist at the University of Colorado, toldIt seems unlikely, therefore, that scientists will actually adopt the negative leap second, especially since they’ve already decided to retire the positive leap second. But given Earth’s recent shorter daily spins, astronomical time might eventually fall behind UTC, forcing the need for negative leap seconds. Levine puts the likelihood of this happening at 30% in the next decade or so, although last year, Duncan Carr Agnew, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, argued inHowever, Veitch also believes our planet might slow down soon, which would be consistent with longer-term trends on record. But we’ll just have to see—and you can, too! Timekeepers estimate that our next “short” day will fall on August 5.Earth ScienceA rocky stretch in Western Australia's Pilbara, near Earth's earliest-confirmed lifeforms, was hit by a meteorite about 3.5 billion years ago.The shot of our planet and the great cosmos beyond offers an eerie sense of scale to our quotidian situations on Earth.Space & SpaceflightAsteroid 2024 YR4 has a 2.2% chance of striking Earth in seven years, but recent updates keep pushing the odds in the wrong direction.Attention Patriots, You Can Help Pay Off the National Debt by Venmo-ing ‘Gifts’ to the FedsAmazon’s Clearing Out This Wireless CarPlay Adapter Like It’s Black Friday in JulyHP’s 2025 14″ Laptop Bundle Is Nearly Free, Now 73% Off Includes Lifetime MS Office Pro and Windows 11 Pro7/25/2025, 9:21 am
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