Welcome to 2017 and another edition of our Nutty News. Summer 2016/2017 seems to have gone in a blink of an eye but we are sure everyone had loads of fun while soaking up the warmth of summer. Check out what our Professors got up to in this edition of Nutty News. Till next time, here are a few things you didn’t know about…time!
- One second used to be defined as 1/86,400 the length of a day. However, Earth’s rotation isn’t perfectly reliable. Tidal friction from the sun and moon slows our planet and increases the length of a day by 3 milliseconds per century.
- This means that in the time of the dinosaurs, the day was just 23 hours long.
- Weather also changes the day. During El Niño events, strong winds can slow Earth’s rotation by a fraction of a millisecond every 24 hours.
- Modern technology can do better. In 1972 a network of atomic clocks in more than 50 countries was made the final authority on time, so accurate that it takes 31.7 million years to lose about one second.
