Something you may have missed (and I’m a bit late in mentioning) is that timewise three recent days were shorter.

Wait, what? Yes, it seems July 9, July 22 and August 5 were unusually short. We like to think our days are 24 hours, but the real world is never that simple. Earth’s rotation is actually influenced by a number of factors, like the sun and moon, the Earth’s magnetic field, and the planet’s balance of mass.

In this case, the moon was at its furthest distance from the equator on those three days, and thus closer to the poles, which changed its gravitational pull on Earth’s axis, thus changing the days’ lengths. 

And speaking of balance of mass, single events like earthquakes can also have an effect. The 2011 earthquake that struck Japan shortened the day’s length. And believe it or not, we have an impact with climate change; depleting groundwater and melting ice caps do change the balance of mass.

Oh, how much change are we talking about? Those three dates in July and August were between 1.3 and 1.51 milliseconds shorter, the 2011 earthquake shortened the day by 1.8 microseconds, and NASA has calculated that the movement of ice and groundwater, has actually increased the days’ length by 1.33 milliseconds per century between 2000 and 2018.

So I hope you enjoyed your shorter days.

For more detail, see “Earth is Going to Spin Much Faster Over the Next Few Months — So Fast That Several Days Are Going to Get Shorter” by Amy Arthur (https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/earth-is-going-to-spin-much-faster-over-the-next-few-months-so-fast-that-several-days-are-going-to-get-shorter?).