The Earth Slows Down

Lately I’ve found myself playing Tetris with my schedule as I try to fit more private clients around my weekly classes and teaching events. I’ve been craving a Time-Turner, the magical device from Harry Potter that allowed Hermione Granger to add several extra hours to her day. I’ve felt constrained by the amount of time I have available to me.

Then I read this article from Discovery Magazine. It explains how Earth’s rotation is never constant, meaning each day is a slightly different length than the last.

The planet’s rotation is in constant, microscopic flux due to the movement of its core, the pull of winds and waves on its surface, friction against mountains, the balance of Earth’s mass changing due to earthquakes shifting continental plates and glaciers near the poles melting and flowing more mass (in the form of meltwater) closer to the equator. The moon’s gravity also gently tugs at the Earth and slows down its rotation.

So billions of years ago, days were shorter than ours today, and now “estimates suggest that the length of a day currently increases by about 1.8 milliseconds every century.” And “the days millions of years from now will be longer still.”

All this is to say that our human ideas about time, and the assumption of its precision, are made up to some degree and unable to account for the micro push and pull as time bends around us through Earth’s natural processes.

So next time you’re freaking out about being late or not having enough time, remember that our understanding of time is an illusion. It might even be to our benefit to do as the Earth does and slow down.

Read the full article here.