• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Earth’s Changing Shape May Cause A Global Timekeeping Crisis

March 27, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Unless we take action, global timekeeping could be heading toward a major problem that will upset everything from computer networks to financial markets. The culprit, oddly enough, is melting polar ice caused by climate change. 

The world uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to ensure there’s a consistent, standardized measure of time across the world to facilitate communication, navigation, scientific research, commerce, and so on. 

Advertisement

This measure of time is computed using data from about 450 atomic clocks, super-accurate time-keeping devices that use the ultrastable “vibrations” of atoms to measure time. Annoyingly, it doesn’t perfectly align with astronomical time, which is based on Earth’s rotation.

The rotation of our planet is a few milliseconds longer than a day defined by atomic clocks, plus the speed of Earth’s spin can vary due to many factors. To account for this, leap seconds are added to UTC every few years or so to ensure it’s synchronized with astronomical time. 

For instance, strange and somewhat unknown changes within Earth’s mostly liquid core and solid mantle have accelerated Earth’s rotation in recent decades, but this has been accounted for by the addition of leap seconds. 

Now, new forces are starting to emerge that could meddle with Earth’s rotational speed even more and upset global timekeeping.

Advertisement

Duncan Carr Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, has recently been studying the rotation of Earth and how it’s being impacted by melting polar ice.

Due to climate change, ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica are melting at such a scale that they are changing the shape of the planet and decreasing its angular velocity more rapidly than before.

Because of Earth’s slowing spin, Agnew argues that the UTC will need to receive a negative leap second – ie. a minute with just 59 seconds – some time around 2029.

“Even a few years ago, the expectation was that leap seconds would always be positive, and happen more and more often. But if you look at changes in the Earth’s rotation, which is the reason for leap seconds, and break down what causes these changes, it looks like a negative one is quite likely,” Agnew explained in a statement.

Advertisement

“One second doesn’t sound like much, but in today’s interconnected world, getting the time wrong could lead to huge problems,” he added.

Regardless of climate change, it’s likely that changes to Earth’s liquid core alone may have necessitated a negative leap second by 2026. However, Agnew’s calculations show that changes in polar ice mass have delayed this eventuality by another three years to 2029. In other words, climate change is already affecting global timekeeping.

If the negative leap second isn’t added, it’s possible that global timekeeping will become unsynchronized, causing massive disruptions to computer systems and telecommunications networks.

The press release for the research suggests the situation could lead to a problem akin to Y2K bug panic – but is that a real concern?

Advertisement

In the late 1990s, there was intense paranoia that computer systems around the globe would crash in the new millennium because computers were not prepared to format or store calendar data in and after the year 2000. People envisioned a computer-induced apocalypse in which planes fell out of the sky, bank accounts were reset to zero, and nuclear weapons would spontaneously launch. As you have no doubt guessed, the fears were hugely overblown, and very few errors were actually reported.

Given how badly the predictions of the Y2K scare went, it would be naive to throw out wild guesses about how this new problem might unfold. That said, it’s something that many scientists are starting to ponder.

“A negative leap second has never been added or tested, so the problems it could create are without precedent. Metrologists around the world are following the unfolding discussion attentively, with the view to avoiding any unnecessary risks,” Dr Patrizia Tavella, Director of the Time Department at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, writes in a commentary article about the study.

Dr Tavella adds that the task of introducing the negative leap second – and coordinating the effort worldwide – would be a “formidable” one.

Advertisement

The new study is published in the journal Nature.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Toyota, Honda urge Congress to reject expanded tax incentive that would benefit Ford, GM, Stellantis
  2. Nintendo says ‘Donkey Kong’ area to open in Universal Studios Japan in 2024
  3. Bloodworms With Metal Teeth Are Real, And You Don’t Wanna Mess With Them
  4. Mighty Megalodon Might’ve Been Long And Slender Rather Than A Monstrous Potato

Source Link: Earth's Changing Shape May Cause A Global Timekeeping Crisis

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version