At some time, The day will no longer have 24 hours and even the oldest clocks will have to be reprogrammed to a duration of approximately 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds.
Scientists discovered that this is the actual measurement of how long it takes for our planet to completely rotate on its axis.
The Earth rotates around the Sun at 107,000 kilometers per hour, and in turn is orbited by a large satellite, the Moon, which exerts its own gravitational pull, which means that this rotation is not uniform nor does it always occur within 24 hours.
After a year, the difference would accumulate one whole day less, which would alter all calculations, calendars, and even work contracts.
“We rule out climate oscillations as drivers in modifying day length, but with all the uncertainties and shortcomings – including the lack of a comprehensive physical model that takes into account various components of core dynamics – there is ample motivation to improve the currently available models of the Earth’s core, which will have considerable implications for internal and external geodynamics,” according to a study carried out by a team of geophysicists from the Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry of the ETH Zürich, in Switzerland.
The proven causes why the length of the day can fluctuate, among which stands out that the Moon moves away from the Earth at a rate of 3.8 cm each year, which would lengthen the days by around 1.72 milliseconds per century.
In the short term, humanity can help stretch the days a little further by reducing the amount of water trapped in glaciers and polar ice caps with melting caused by climate change.
However, a mysterious variation in the length of the sidereal day between 3 and 4 milliseconds was detected, on a scale of up to millennia, which is a little more difficult to pin down.
Alterations in rotation
A team of geophysicists from the Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry of the ETH Zürich, in Switzerland, believes they have found the cause of these small alterations in the planet’s rotation, and they found it thousands of kilometers below the surface: in the molten iron core of the Earth.
They found that certain small movements at the boundary between the core and the mantle could be affecting the rotation.
While there have previously been attempts to link these movements with observed data, improvements in theoretical modeling techniques, such as observational data collection, have improved significantly, allowing the cause of this almost imperceptible change to be identified.
To do this, they used a neural network and carefully modeled the volume changes of ice and terrestrial water, to determine how they alter the rotation of the Earth, incorporating the effects of the attraction of the Moon and the elastic crust of the Earth, data historical records of lunar eclipses and occultations, and also used precise measurements of the Earth’s magnetic field, with which they were able to isolate them and thus focus on looking for signs of the influence of the core.
Their results suggest that the influence of changes in Earth’s ice and water mass was smaller than previously thought; and that fluctuations on millennial time scales were consistent with a simplified model of the magnetohydrodynamics of Earth’s outer fluid core.
Elastic watches
Elasticity these days is linked to the winter solstice, a phenomenon that marks the end of autumn and the official beginning of winter, on Saturday, December 21.
This is one of the most notable astronomical events of the year: in the northern hemisphere, as well as the arrival of the longest night of the year, a phenomenon known as sidereal day. Same shorter days and lower temperatures.
With the drop in temperatures this last month there have been thermal sensations typical of winter, but this season is officially entered when this event occurs.
Source: Ambito
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