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Happy Monday, listeners. For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman. It's been a while,

but we're finally back with our usual science news roundup. Let's catch up on some of the science

news you might have missed in the last week or so. If last Tuesdays seemed to just fly right by,

that's probably because it was a little shorter than usual.

The International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service says that July 22nd was around

0.8 milliseconds short of the standard 24 hours. That's slightly less dramatic than the almost

1.4 milliseconds that were missing from July 10th,

and scientists anticipate another ever so slightly truncated day on August 5th.

Now, while there were plenty of headlines about these missing fractions of milliseconds,

it's not actually news that the Earth's rotation varies in speed. The length of a single

rotation, also known as a day, is impacted by factors like the movements of our planet's liquid

core, variations in the jet stream, and the gravitational pull of the moon. One 2024 study

even suggested that melting polar ice has decreased Earth's angular

velocity enough to slow rotations down. In fact, Earth's days have generally been trending

longer, if you look back at the last few billion years. Research suggests that at various

...