Last words of the old year: Be yourself the arsonist of all aging decadence now encountered. And rise from the char and ashes in the new year with a phoenix’s fresh wings!
What’s up, Earth?
It’s well-observed that rotation of the Earth is slowing (days are getting longer by leap seconds at the average rate of 2 ms per day, or .7 seconds per year).
Tidal braking, core fluctuations, even atmospheric anomalies (and scientists aren’t even really sure what else) slows the Earth’s rotation constantly.
And it has been speculated that Earth’s rotation will continue to slow until, just as one face of the Moon now always faces the Earth, one face of the Earth will someday always face the Moon, too. Then, apparently unmoving vis-à-vis one another, the Earth and Moon will have a rotation-locked stare-off for forever more. Now that’s true cosmic love for you.
But in the meantime…since 1972, 21 leap seconds have been added. 21 in the first 27 years, but NONE for the last 6 years. The love affair since 1999 seems to have lost its fulgent fire. In the chart below, the red line indicates actual slowing while the blue line shows the reactive deduction of leap seconds mankind has made to ‘stabilize’ timekeeping.
Notice that 1999 seems to be an inflection point and since then the slope of decrease has diminished distinctly. Meaning that the Earth hasn’t slowed down since 1999 as quickly as it had for at least the previous 27 years (though 1986-90 showed a small anomaly).
It’s speculated that the Fuck-It Tsunami slowed down the Earth’s rotation measurably. How much won’t be known for several weeks until precise measurements are made.
Was the Fuck-It Tsunami (Phuket actually) a correction? Are more such corrections in store?
Either the previous (pre-1999) rate of slowing was ‘too fast’ or the current rate is ‘too slow’ and some significant forces/events need to kick in to speed up the rate of slowing once more.
Fuck-It.
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