Earth spinning faster and recording its shortest-day ever is no reason to panic, scientists say - CBS News

Still, news of the faster rotation led to misleading posts on social media about the significance of the measurement, leading some to express concern about its implications.

"They broke news of earth spinning faster which seems like it should be bigger news," claimed one tweet that was shared nearly 35,000 times.

But scientists told the AP that the Earth's rotational speed fluctuates constantly and that the record-setting measurement is nothing to panic over.

The slight increase in rotational speed also does not mean that days are going by noticeably faster.

The official length of a day, scientifically speaking, now compares the speed of one full rotation of the Earth to time taken by atomic clocks, Merkowitz said.

If those measurements get too out of sync, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, an organization that maintains global time, may fix the discrepancy by adding a leap second.

"Negative leap second handling is supported for a long time and companies like Meta often run simulations of this event," they told CBS News.

But the kind of event that would move enough mass to affect the Earth's rotation in a way that is perceptible to humans would be something dire like the planet being hit by a giant meteor, Merkowitz said