In the words of Carole King, did you feel the earth move? Not earthquake-like, whereby stuff is shaking and falling from shelves, but speeding up and slowing down, kind of like the moving walkway at the airport jerking every now and again? It happened. Or was it just another Y2K-like moment, when the tech geeks raised a huge red flag that caused all of us mere mortals to run around like chickens with our heads cut off, and all for naught?
Let's back up.
Of the very few things in this world we can count on is that every day when we wake up the earth is still spinning. For sure, there are innumerable dystopian tales where something affects that motion. But absent any super-duper alien weapon or an asteroid hitting London, that daily cycle will repeat itself for the foreseeable future. It is true that the earth is slowing its turning, but it will take billions of years for it to have any noticeable effect. And probably by the time it becomes an issue the sun will explode, making the earth's speed the least of the worries for whomever is left at that time. Bottom line: on the list of things to be concerned about, Netflix chiding you for sharing your password should be far more worrying.
However, it turns out we are experiencing some anomalies in that rotational speed right now. On July 10 we spun a bit faster, making it the shortest day of the year so far, clocking in at 1.36 milliseconds less than the usual 24 hours. Likewise, July 22 was 1.34 shorter, while August 5 is expected to come in 1.25 milliseconds light. In the grand scheme of things, that acceleration is nothing to worry about from an extinction perspective. A variety of factors, from the pull of the moon to seasonal changes in the atmosphere to how the liquid in the planet's core is sloshing around all contribute to how fast we spin. Climate change is also a factor, as the spreading of water from the formerly frozen ice caps changes the weight distribution and how we turn. But none of it is life altering, so there's little chance in the short term of your glass of iced tea sliding off the table.
Your electronics, however, are another factor. That little variation makes a difference in the atomic clocks that provide the measurements for things like GPS and navigation. If they're not exact, your Google maps might direct you to the pet store as opposed to Target, or worse, off the bridge as opposed to on it. And so just as we have a leap day every 4 years to align the calendar to our orbit around the sun, at irregular times scientists have added a leap second to smooth things out. Since 1972 when the practice started, 27 seconds have been added, with last occurring in December of 2016.
The key word there is "irregular." Unlike leap year, which occurs like, well, clockwork, leap seconds are inserted as needed. And that means that systems can't always account for them. After one was inserted in 2012 Reddit crashed, while some systems at Qantas Airways went haywire, causing long flight delays across Australia. And after the 2016 addition systems at Reddit, Gawker and Mozilla all went blooey. Now that we're seeing more speeding up, there is talk of taking time away, a so called "negative-leap-second." Does that mean your future cell phone payment might happen in the past? Possibly: no on has any idea what might actually happen if they put it into play.
As such, the experts who keep tabs on these things are saying we should do away with those random fixes entirely by 2035. That doesn't mean the problem will go away, just that we'll avoid tinkering with the clocks for a bit. It does mean that at some point in the future they may need to add a bunch to make up for it. And so there is a very good chance your great-great-great grandchildren may suddenly feel more mature when a leap hour is inserted into their lives.
But that's a ways off. Until then, engineers are hoping that some software "smears" will cover over the issues, and no further seconds will need to be inserted. As the production engineering folks at Meta posted "we are supporting a larger community push to stop the future introduction of leap seconds - which we believe will be enough for the next millennium." Translation: Waze should still be able to get you to grandma's house, for at least a little while.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford is fascinated by time. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.
