The blue planet is spinning faster than ever, and an absolute rotation speed record could be broken in the next few weeks. A phenomenon as fascinating as it is unexpected, still unexplained by scientists.
While the subjective perception of everyday life speeding by is commonplace, a scientific reality is now reinforcing it: the Earth is indeed spinning faster. Since 2020, our planet has been accelerating its rotation on itself, resulting in shorter days than ever before. According to astrophysicist Graham Jones, the next few weeks could see the shortest day ever measured in human history.
Three critical dates: towards a new world record
Forecasts point to three key dates for this phenomenon in 2025: July 9, July 22 and August 5. At these precise moments, all the conditions would be in place for the duration of a terrestrial day to fall below the current record set on July 5, 2024, with a duration of 24 hours minus 1.66 milliseconds.
Experts remain cautious: some estimate that the days concerned could be barely longer than this record. But the general trend of acceleration, observed since 2020, seems to be holding.
A phenomenon measured on the scale of a thousandth of a second
A solar day normally lasts 86,400 seconds. However, the Earth’s rotation varies subtly due to geophysical factors. These variations can only be counted in milliseconds, but they are detectable thanks to the extreme precision of atomic clocks.
Between 2021 and 2024, these anomalies became increasingly pronounced, with a series of documented “shortened” days:
- 2021 : -1.47 ms
- 2022 : -1.59 ms
- 2023: -1.31 ms
- 2024: record with -1.66 ms
And what about the Moon?
The dates predicted for 2025 coincide with periods when the Moon is far from the Earth’s equator, which has a slight influence on the Earth’s rotation. However, this factor alone does not explain the current acceleration, which runs counter to scientific predictions.
For billions of years, the Moon has gradually slowed the Earth’s rotation via tidal forces. 4.5 billion years ago, a day lasted only 3 to 6 hours. The natural tendency is to slow down – not speed up.
An unrecognizable Earth 50 billion years from now
Current models, which take into account ocean currents, atmospheric pressure and tectonic plates, are unable to explain this sudden acceleration. The most serious hypothesis points to profound changes in the Earth’s core, still poorly understood. It’s as if the Earth’s “internal engine” had changed gear.
In the long term, if the initial slowdown were to resume, the Earth would eventually synchronize its rotation with the lunar revolution, as the Moon is already doing with us. This would mean that our satellite would only be visible from one half of the globe. But this scenario belongs to the distant future – and by then, the Sun will have ceased to exist as we know it.
- The Earth has been spinning faster and faster since 2020.
- A new record for the shortest day could be set in July or August 2025.
- This phenomenon contradicts conventional models based on billions of years of slowdown due to the Moon.
- The probable cause: a change in the Earth’s core, still largely unexplained.
So the next time you feel like the day is slipping through your fingers, tell yourself that in reality… it might literally be.
