Jacksonville, Fl – If you woke up tired perhaps it was because the night was shorter.
Well according to astronomers, last night was a few milliseconds 1.3 ms shorter to be precise and there are more days this summer that will be less than 24 hours long.
While the time is too small to for us to notice, atomic clocks around the globe are noticing.
The reason for the faster spinning Earth boils down to our moon: on nights when the moon is farther from Earth’s equator, its gravity tweaks Earth’s spin.
When mass (like water or air) moves closer to Earth’s spin axis, Earth rotates faster — like ice skaters pulling arms in.
Other influences — seasonal tree growth, melting ice, massive earthquakes — can tweak our planet’s mass distribution. This summer, the moon’s position is the main culprit speeding things up.
When Are the Other Short Nights?
Get your pocket watches ready: Earth is expected to put on this speed stunt again:
- July 22, 2025 — ~1.3–1.5 ms shorter
- August 5, 2025 — same deal, another 1.3–1.5 ms nip
So if you felt like the night ended at warp speed on July 9, don’t worry — it’s not just you.
Should We Care?
The answer is “mostly no” for everyday folks, but it matters to precision tech:
- GPS satellites, financial networks, and scientific experiments rely on exact timing.
- Timekeepers watch these secretly fast days and may eventually introduce a negative leap second — a first-of-its-kind “subtraction” from UTC to keep atomic clocks in sync.
When was the last leap second added? That was in 2016 — and soon, we might see one go the other way, though likely not until after more consistent spin trends emerge.