From the last few years, Earth's rotation is spinning faster than its usual speed and the planet could be beginning a 50 year period of shorter days, as per the reports.
On June 29, 2022; the planet rotated faster and completed it’s quickest-ever spin, followed quickly by a day that lasted 1.50 milliseconds less on July 26, 2022.
The previous record for the shortest rotation was reported on July 19, 2020, when the Earth’s rotation took 1.4602 milliseconds less than 24 hours. In the same year, scientists recorded the 28 shortest days since 1960.
According to Interesting Engineering (IE) news outlet, a 50-year phase of shorter days may be starting right now for Earth.
Reports say that the Earth’s fastening rotation could have major consequences on atomic clocks, which are used in GPS satellites.
As the changing time-span won’t take into account the Earth’s changing rotation which means that GPS satellites—which already have to be corrected for the effect of Einstein's Theory of Relativity — will quickly become useless.
Apart from that, smartphones, computers, and other communications systems will render useless as they are synchronised with Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers. Since the clock progresses from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 before resetting to 00:00:00, a time jump like this can crash programmes and corrupt data.
Scientists have not yet come to a particular conclusion as to why the earth is spinning faster than its normal speed.
However, A study published in Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical Union suggests that global warming has led to significant melting of glaciers due to which our planet’s axis of rotation has been moving faster since the 1990s.