Planet Earth will spin a little faster on three separate days this summer, starting on July 9. This will technically result in shorter days, but the change will be so minuscule you won\u2019t even notice.<\/p>\n
Several milliseconds will be shaved off of the 24 hours it takes for Earth to complete a full rotation \u2014 we\u2019re talking even less time than the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n
Why is Earth\u2019s rotation speed changing?<\/p>\n
Planet Earth is our timekeeper, but it\u2019s not perfect.<\/p>\n
It takes our planet 24 hours \u2014 one day \u2014 to complete one full rotation on its axis, which breaks down to 86,400 seconds<\/a>. But Earth\u2019s rotation could change by a millisecond (.001 seconds) or two every day.<\/p>\n The orbit of the moon can have an effect on how fast the Earth spins around. \u201cOur planet spins quicker when the moon\u2019s position is far to the north or south of Earth\u2019s equator,\u201d according to TimeandDate.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cEarthquakes, volcanoes, tidal forces, subterranean geology, and many other mechanisms can cause the planet\u2019s rotation to slow down or speed up, and those micro-adjustments can trend over time,\u201d Popular Mechanics reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n The 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan in 2011 accelerated Earth\u2019s rotation<\/a>, shortening the length of the standard 24-hour day by 1.8 microseconds (0.0018 milliseconds).<\/p>\n These tiny day-to-day fluctuations in the Earth\u2019s spin speed began to be measured in the 1950s with atomic clocks. Any number above or below the standard 86,400 seconds is called the length of day (LOD).<\/p>\n The shortest day recorded was on July 5, 2024, when Earth completed its full rotation 1.66 milliseconds faster than the standard 86,400 seconds.<\/p>\n When will this happen?<\/p>\n There are three days this summer when the moon will be around its furthest distance from Earth\u2019s equator, resulting in a minuscule increase in the Earth\u2019s spin speed. The following are predictions from scientists:<\/p>\n July 9: The day is shortened by 1.30 milliseconds<\/p>\n<\/li>\n July 22: Earth loses 1.38 milliseconds of the day<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Aug. 5: The day is shortened by 1.51 milliseconds<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Wait \u2014 isn\u2019t there another day that\u2019s considered the shortest of the year?<\/p>\n What feels like the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere is known as the winter solstice, when Earth is tilted away from the sun at its maximum. This results in the fewest amount of daylight hours all year and occurs in mid-December.<\/p>\n Will Earth always have 24 hours in a day?<\/p>\n There weren\u2019t always 24 hours in a day. Researchers believe that in the Jurassic Period, it took Earth just 23 hours<\/a> to make a complete rotation around its axis. Scientists have found<\/a> that the length of a day on Earth is increasing each century by about 1.7 milliseconds. Over time, that adds up. Experts think that 200 million years from now, there will be 25 hours in a full day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Planet Earth will spin a little faster on three separate days this summer, starting on July 9. This…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[37929,37931,37934,37932,159,37933,37930,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-50156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-earths-equator","9":"tag-earths-rotation","10":"tag-full-rotation","11":"tag-milliseconds","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-shorter-days","14":"tag-the-earth","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114820680840441982","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n