Interestingly, before that our planet gradually slowed down its rotation. 

This is not something scary and alarming, experts say. The planet’s rotation is always slightly variable, due to fluctuations in atmospheric pressure, wind, currents and displacement of the earth’s core.

However, this phenomenon greatly affects the work of international timekeeper who use ultra-accurate atomic clocks to measure Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Scientists usually only track the addition of leap seconds at the end of June or December. The leap seconds have been added since 1972, about once a year and a half, since the planet had only been slowing down before.

However, the Earth’s rotation acceleration has forced scientists to talk about laxative seconds for the first time. Now, instead of adding seconds, they may have to subtract, but the researchers are not in a hurry to do the calculation, because the general trend needs to be followed.

As the scientists note, the year 2020 on Earth has already had 28 days that have passed exceptionally fast. The July 19 date is 1,4602 milliseconds shorter than a standard date, and this is the new record.