On June 29 of this year, our planet had the shortest day on record. The previous 28 records were set in 2020. The earth took 1.59 milliseconds less to rotate on its own axis that day.
To give you an idea, the blink of an eye lasts 300 milliseconds. In other words, the time lost that day is the equivalent of just over 300ths of a blink, and can only be perceived with very precise instruments.4
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The length of days on Earth is measured by rotational motion, or how long it takes for the planet to rotate on its own axis. And thanks to atomic clocks, we can measure those days with a precision that we couldn’t have otherwise.
An Earth day -or a period of rotation- should theoretically take 86,400 seconds, which are the seconds in 1,440 minutes or 24 hours.
Until 2020, the “shortest” day on record had occurred on July 5, 2005, with a duration of 1.0516 milliseconds less than 24 hours.
But in 2020, Earth reported the shortest 28 days on record since atomic clocks began to be used in the 1960s.
On July 19 of that year, the planet broke the record it had set in 2005, recording a day 1.47 milliseconds shorter than normal. The new record, June 29 this year, is 1.59 milliseconds shorter.