Daily Mail, because the Earth is spinning faster, time is passing by quicker and now, the 24-hour day is ending just half a millisecond sooner, according to timekeeping scientists. Those timekeeping scientists are now debating whether or not a second should be deleted from time to account for the discrepancy caused by the Earth’s faster rotation. This deletion of a second is what’s known as a negative leap second and it’s never been done before.“It is certainly correct that the Earth is spinning faster now than at any time in the last 50 years,” senior research scientist with the National Physical Laboratory’s time and frequency group, Peter Whibberly, told The Telegraph. “It is quite possible that a negative leap second will be needed if the earth’s rotation rate increases further…and it’s also possible that the need for a negative leap second might push the decision towards ending leap seconds for good.”
While a negative leap second might be a first for the world, a change in the earth’s literal timeline isn’t anything new. As pointed out by Daily Mail, since the 1970s, 27 leap seconds have been added to the time to keep atomic time lined up with solar time.
Leap seconds are added when the Earth takes longer than 24 hours to complete a single rotation and that’s happened quite a bit in the past few decades. Scientists began to notice an increase in the Earth’s rotational speed in the middle of 2020. We’d like to think the Man of Steel himself, Superman, is behind this as he’s no stranger to flying around the earth to mess with time, but knowing the change started to happen last year, it’s probably something to do with 2020 and everything that year put the world through.
Daily Mail reports that on July 19, 2020, scientists noticed the day was 1.4602 milliseconds shorter than usual, which was the shortest day since records of a day’s length began. The shortest day before July 19 of last year happened in 2005. That 2005 record has been broken 28 times in the past twelve months and on average, days are passing half a second faster now.
Does half a second of time actually matter though? To those living out their usual days, half a second likely won’t matter, but it could matter for things like satellites and communication relays, which rely on atomic time aligning near exactly with solar time. That’s why scientists are debating the use of a negative leap second. Only time will (literally) tell what they decide to do.
While waiting for that decision, check out this story where some scientists claim evidence of a parallel universe where time runs backwards and then read about how there’s a 50-50 chance we are living in a simulation. If all this talk of science has you in the mood for some sci-fi viewing, check out our list of the best sci-fi movies on Netflix right now.
Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.