Compensating for the lost time may prove challenging for scientists.
, during humanity’s watch, we’ve been holding steady at about 24 hours for a full rotation — which translates to about 365 rotations per trip ’round the Sun.
“As time goes on, there is a gradual divergence between the time of atomic clocks and the time measured by astronomy, that is, by the position of Earth or the moon and stars,” says Judah Levine, a physicist in the time and frequency division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Basically, a year as recorded by atomic clocks was a bit faster than that same year calculated from Earth’s movement.
But in the past decade or so, Earth’s rotational slowdown has … well, slowed down. There hasn’t been a leap second added since 2016, and our planet is currently spinning faster than it has in half a century. Scientists aren’t sure why. Whether a regular leap second or a negative leap second is called for, in fact, these tiny changes can be a massive headache for industries ranging from telecommunications to navigation systems. That’s because leap seconds meddle with time in a way that computers aren’t prepared to handle.
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