The Earth began to rotate faster: scientists want to “freeze” time

Scientists who no longer see the point in adding or subtracting extra seconds want to “freeze” the arrows of the so-called coordinated time. And this despite the fact that the Earth, starting from 2022, began to rotate around its axis anomalously faster. What is the reason for this, and why there are states for which such a “freeze” is still unprofitable, we talked with Vitaly PALCHIKOV, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor, Chief Researcher of the Main Metrological Center of the State Service for Time, Frequency and Determining the Parameters of the Earth’s Rotation “VNIIFTRI” .

Metrologists check the time according to the reference, atomic clock, in which seconds are counted depending on the transition between states in the cesium atom, and the earth, which go depending on the actual speed of rotation of our planet around its axis. The first, until recently, has always been a little hasty in relation to the second. Therefore, in order to balance these two scales, scientists introduced a third – Coordinated Universal Time – UTC and added an extra second to it every few years.

It was believed that the presence of the Moon, with ebbs and flows, the presence of the atmosphere, as well as the gravitational influence of other planets, natural disasters, in particular earthquakes, contributed to the deceleration of the natural course of the Earth.

But this year, something happened that no one expected: the earth clock, on the contrary, began to run forward, and the atomic clock fell behind them …

Help “MK”. The acceleration of the planet was recorded in June 2022. If earlier the Earth’s day lasted an average of 86.4 thousand seconds, then on June 29 the Earth turned around its axis 1.59 milliseconds faster.

One of the reasons was the melting of ice masses in the polar zones and the change in the shape of the Earth because of this: it becomes smoother at the poles and more convex at the equator. Despite the fact that this theory has not yet been proven, scientists have already thought about whether it is now worth adjusting UTC instead of winding back time, on the contrary?

“We are closely monitoring the situation and have long noticed that the Earth rotates unevenly around its axis,” explains Palchikov. – Since the beginning of the addition of the first leap second (this happened in the 70s with the advent of atomic clocks), a total of 36 seconds have been added, all with a “+” sign. They were added to UTC immediately when there was a gap of 0.9 seconds in coordinated time with the earth.

As soon as the scales diverged for more time, the so-called leap second was introduced all over the world at the same time, and the coordinated time scale returned to its original position again.

We were once again preparing to add a second (in 2018 we were warned about this by the World Earth Motion Parameters Service), but suddenly the Earth began to accelerate. For the first time, things got to the point where the difference I mentioned above was reduced to almost zero. There has been a tendency that this time we will have to move the clock backwards, adjusting the coordinated time scale according to the new “trend” of the planet. According to forecasts, the leap second will be subtracted in 2029-2030.

However, according to Vitaly Palchikov, now many scientists have come out in favor of leaving the coordinated time scale unchanged, despite the acceleration of the Earth. Theories have already appeared that there is a certain periodicity in this change, and it is calculated in many tens or hundreds of years. In other words, move – do not move the arrows, the Earth will build everything in the end the way it needs to.

“In general, moving the arrows, as we have done for the last 50 years, is extremely inconvenient,” the scientist says. – This is fraught with the emergence of all kinds of man-made disasters, failures in precise communication and navigation systems. For example, our GLONASS satellites were specially programmed to add one second during their service life, as well as the systems of many other countries. But, for example, the American GPS system does not depend on the jumping second …

So now the entire world community is on the verge of an important decision – to completely abandon the movement of the clock, it does not matter – the planet slows down or speeds up.

In November of this year, the General Conference of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures will be held in Paris, where it will be proposed to introduce the abolition of the leap second either until 2035 or from 2035.

“This means,” Palchikov explains, that a decision can be made in the very near future, which is not very beneficial for our country. We understand that it is better not to twitch the time scale, but Russia, whose equipment is synchronized with satellites designed to introduce a second, is not yet ready for such a transition.

However, if the decision is made already in November, it will be legally formalized already in 2023 at the general conference of the Telecommunication Union.

It is noteworthy that those 37 seconds that the earthlings have been adding to their time scale since the 70s will not be canceled.

– There will be no zeroing, – says the doctor of sciences, – they will no longer pay attention to the difference between the coordinated time scale and the universal time scale (the natural course of the Earth), even if it reaches at least 10 seconds.

Help “MK”. VNIIFTRI houses the state primary time standard of the Russian Federation – the atomic clock. They reproduce the unit of time – a second with an accuracy of 5 * 10 to -16 degrees after the decimal point. There are separate time standards in the world that reach 18 decimal places.