The Telegraph appears to have had one of the earliest posts on this topic this time around… https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/04/earth-spinning-faster-now-time-p... …and, from there, it was quickly picked up by The New York Post: https://nypost.com/2021/01/05/atomic-clock-scientists-suggest-subtracting-a-... It's amazing how quickly "fastest in 50 years" becomes "faster than maybe ever" in popular media. ;) On 2020-01-01, DUT1 (per the IERS Rapid Service in Bulletins A) was −0.177278, while a year later on 2021-01-01 it was nearly the same at −0.175360. This is a bit unexpected: In January 2020, predictions for January 2021 were much closer to −0.30, with only a slight regression between −0.24 to −0.21 along the way. In fact, we got near −0.26 in June 2020 before regressing all the way back toward −0.17 in October 2020. The projections for the year ahead indicate the accumulated difference is indeed expected to regress again from approximately −0.19 in April/May 2021 to around −0.10 in September 2021, before turning back around. Still, we've got a ways to go before DUT1 would return to positive territory — and even longer before it would start to threaten the need for a negative leap second — so while it's definitely a possibility to seriously keep in mind, I'm not too, too worried *just* yet. -- Tim Parenti On Tue, 12 Jan 2021 at 10:10, Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler@gmail.com> wrote:
There were a number of articles about a week ago with some details about the amount by which the earth is spinning faster.
One such is: https://www.space.com/earth-spinning-faster-negative-leap-second.html
It says, in part:
The year 2020 was already faster than usual, astronomically speaking (cue
sighs of relief). According to Time and Date, Earth broke the previous record for shortest astronomical day, set in 2005, 28 times. That year's shortest day, July 5, saw Earth complete a rotation 1.0516 milliseconds faster than 86,400 seconds. The shortest day in 2020 was July 19, when the planet completed one spin 1.4602 milliseconds faster than 86,400 seconds.
That appears to be a report from Live Science — I've not tracked down the original.
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 7:57 AM Koning, Paul <Paul.Koning@dell.com> wrote:
On Jan 12, 2021, at 9:48 AM, Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> wrote:
[EXTERNAL EMAIL]
On Tue 2021-01-12T14:34:52+0000 Koning, Paul hath writ:
Is there any reason to believe that story is more than fiction?
"Why Scientists Want to Shorten the Minute to 59 Seconds"
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a35165130/leap-second-shorten-minut...
No, but it is a common fiction that has arisen because the content of the negotiations that led to the inception of leap seconds was not explained.
At the time of inception no scientist believed that leap seconds were the best way to regulate time. The closest that they could come at IAU was to assert that leap seconds were the "optimum solution" while redacting all of the arguments and discussion indicating that the problem that needed a solution was legal and political, not technical.
-- Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB 260 Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 https://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m
Yes. The other point, though, is that leap seconds lengthen the day. In theory we can have omitted seconds, in practice we have not had those. The article speaks of the days getting shorter. Is there any data that supports this assertion?
paul
-- Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler@gmail.com> #include <disclaimer.h> Guardian of DBD::Informix - v2018.1031 - http://dbi.perl.org "Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused."