Skip to playerSkip to main contentSkip to footer
  • today
Scientists explain the reason why we may experience shorter summer days than we have in the past.
Transcript
00:00tides going in and out that is literally just the moon's pull pulling water on july 9th
00:07the moon was at such an angle um in which relative to earth's equator it was pretty
00:13distant only fractionally but it was obviously enough to affect the amount of water on the side
00:18of the planet therefore the spin of the earth and this culminated in ultimately yeah the the day
00:25being a millisecond shorter which is pretty remarkable in the in the grand scheme of things
00:30um there's always anomalies in any kind of like data set it'll require more like following and
00:34tracking but uh it's certainly yeah the earth's not spinning out of control
00:41now we also asked geophysicist duncan agnew what's behind the shorter date in addition to the moon's
00:47pull he sees some other factors take a look climate change has definitely played a role it's it is
00:54actually slows the earth down as ice melts and spreads out over the ocean and that slows the
01:01earth down and we have no way of predicting it but apparently the core has been slowing down
01:06for the last 50 years and as a result the earth has been speeding up i think it's of interest because
01:13the whole idea that the earth the entire earth is spinning at different rates is kind of amazing for
01:22everyday life i'd say it doesn't really matter at all unless you somehow are a magic human being
01:28who can detect a millisecond of difference you're not going to notice geophysicists astronomers and
01:36even nasa are expecting shorter days so mark your calendars this is going to be for july 22nd
01:41and on august 5th so get ready

Recommended