Category: 7. Science

Should we expect shorter days soon?

The Earth is likely to spin slightly faster in July and August, which could lead to shorter days.

Notably, the Earth completes a little more than 365 full spins on its axis each year. That is the total number of days we have in a year.

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However, it was not always like this. Some studies show that in the past, Earth took between 490 and 372 days to complete one trip around the Sun.

So, which days in July and August might be the shortest? And what is the reason behind this change?

Let’s take a look:

Why and when Earth is predicted to spin faster

A scientist has warned that Earth’s rotation is speeding up unexpectedly, with the shortest day in history possibly just weeks away.

Graham Jones, an astrophysicist from the University of London, said the Earth’s spin may increase slightly on three specific days, July 9, July 22, and August 5, he told Daily Mail.

The difference will be very small, measured only in milliseconds.

On these days, the length of a day might drop by 1.30, 1.38, or 1.51 milliseconds, one after the other.

Experts say that even a slight change can impact satellite systems, GPS accuracy, and how we keep track of time.

Leonid Zotov, a researcher at Moscow State University, said: “Nobody expected this, the cause of this acceleration is not explained.”

Since 2020, scientists have observed the Earth turning slightly quicker than usual, but they are still unsure why this is happening.

Earlier, the planet had been slowing down gradually, mainly due to the moon’s pull, which over time helped shape our current 24-hour days.

Typically, the Earth takes 24 hours, or exactly 86,400 seconds, to complete one full spin, known as a solar day.

Judah Levine, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told Discover Magazine in 2021, “This lack of the need for leap seconds was not predicted.”

“The assumption was, in fact, that Earth would continue to slow down and leap seconds would continue to be needed. And so this effect, this result, is very surprising.”

If the Earth keeps rotating faster, timekeepers might need to make changes to official time, which could include removing a leap second for the first time ever in 2029.

Why is Earth spinning faster?

The Earth’s rotation is not perfectly steady. It can shift by a few milliseconds now and then.

This happens because natural forces, such as earthquakes and ocean movements, can change the planet’s spin slightly.

Other reasons include melting glaciers, changes in Earth’s molten core, and weather patterns like El Nino, which can either slow down or speed up rotation by small amounts.

Scientists use atomic clocks to track these tiny changes with high precision. The recent increase in spin has caught many of them off guard.

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According to reports, the fastest day so far was on July 5, 2024, when the Earth spun 1.66 milliseconds faster than the usual 24 hours.

Earthquakes are also known to affect the planet’s rotation. In March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake near Japan shifted the Earth’s axis and slightly shortened the length of a day.

Dr Richard Gross from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told Popular Mechanics in 2011, “Earthquakes can change the Earth’s rotation by rearranging the Earth’s mass. This is what a spinning ice skater does to make herself spin faster. She moves her arms closer to her body, she’s moving her mass closer to the axis about which she’s rotating.”

Understanding the causes of this spin change involves looking at what’s happening inside the Earth, from moving molten layers deep in the core to powerful ocean currents and winds high in the sky.

Earth’s interior is not solid all the way through. Its centre is made of hot, liquid metal that flows and shifts. This movement can change the planet’s balance, like a skater turning faster by pulling in their arms.

Currents in the ocean and jet streams, fast air flows high up in the atmosphere, also move mass around, leading to small changes in the speed of Earth’s rotation.

Scientists are looking at all of these, the moon’s pull, movement in the core, ocean flow, and wind, to understand what’s happening.

Topline

The full buck moon — the first full moon of summer in the Northern Hemisphere — will turn full on Thursday, July 10. It will be best seen at moonrise as it appears in the east during dusk that evening. It takes its name from the antlers that emerge from a buck’s forehead in summer. Occurring so soon after the solstice, like last June’s strawberry moon, it will also be one of the lowest-hanging full moons of the year.

Key Facts

Best Time To See The Full ‘buck Moon’ Rise

To find the best time to see it appear from where you are, consult a moonrise calculator. Here are some sample times :

• New York: sunset at 8:29 p.m. EDT, moonrise at 8:54 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 10.
• Los Angeles: sunset at 8:07 p.m. PDT, moonrise at 8:33 p.m. PDT on Thursday, July 10.
• London: sunset at 9:16 p.m. BST, moonrise at 9:46 p.m. BST on Thursday, July 10.

The Iconic Image Of All Humans But One, From The ‘buck Moon’

On July 21, 1969, the late Michael Collins — Command Module Pilot on NASA’s Apollo 11 spacecraft — took this image of the lunar lander Eagle as it returned Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 Mission Commander, and Buzz Aldrin, Lunar Module Pilot, from the moon’s surface where they had become the first humans to walk upon it. In the background is Earth, making Collins the only human not featured. Technically speaking, those on Earth’s night side aren’t in it, either, but it remains an iconic image. Collins took it while he orbited about 60 miles (97 km) above the moon in Apollo 11’s Columbia command module, where he had remained alone for 22 hours.

Background

The buck moon is the seventh of 12 full moons in 2025. A solar year is 365.24 days, while a lunar year is around 354.37 days, so sometimes there are 13 full moons in one calendar (solar) year — as in 2023 and next in 2028. Of the 12 full moons in 2025, three will be “supermoons” and two “blood moon” total lunar eclipses (the first happened on March 13-14, and the next lunar eclipse is on Sept. 7-8).

The next full moon is the sturgeon moon, which will occur on Saturday, Aug. 9. It will be the second full moon of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

Further Reading

ForbesSee Two ‘Blood Moons,’ Three ‘Supermoons’ And The Biggest Full Moon Since 2019: The Moon In 2025By Jamie CarterForbesWhen To See June’s ‘Strawberry Moon,’ The Lowest Full Moon Since 2006By Jamie Carter

Saturday night presents a perfect opportunity to spot a “Golden Handle” shining brightly on the moon’s surface. It is a fleeting sight that appears when sunlight catches the peaks of a mountain range on the moon.

On July 5, the moon’s terminator, the line that separates lunar night from day, falls slightly to the west of the great circular plain Sinus Iridum (Latin for the ‘Bay of Rainbows’) in the northwest region of the lunar surface. At this time the sun is perfectly positioned to illuminate the eastern peaks of the vast Montes Jura mountain range bordering Sinus Iridum’s northernmost edge, giving rise to a spectacular golden arc that has since become known as the “Golden Handle”.

• AlphaGenome can predict how individual DNA changes affect gene expression and protein production across the entire human genome.
• The tool outperformed 22 of 24 other computer models in identifying specific features in DNA sequences.
• Academic researchers can use AlphaGenome free of charge while DeepMind works on commercial availability.

AI model analyzes entire genome

DeepMind has developed AlphaGenome, an AI tool that can explain how genetic changes affect gene function. The model builds on the company’s previous success with AlphaFold, which predicts how proteins fold into their three-dimensional shapes.

AlphaGenome can analyze DNA sequences up to one million base pairs long. The tool predicts where genes start and end, which can vary between different cell types. It also captures how RNA is processed and how much RNA is produced from the genes.

Outperforms other models

In tests, AlphaGenome performed better than 22 of 24 other computer models in identifying specific features in individual DNA sequences. This included coding and non-coding regions as well as transcription factor binding sites. The model also outperformed 24 of 26 models in predicting the effect of genetic variants on gene regulation.

AlphaGenome is the first AI tool that can handle the entire genome, not just the estimated 2 percent that codes for proteins. As Hani Goodarzi from the University of California San Francisco explains, the model can for the first time predict exactly where and how an RNA variant is expressed directly from a DNA sequence.

Helps cancer research

Marc Mansour, cancer molecular biologist at University College London, describes how his laboratory compares genomes from patients’ cancer cells with healthy cells. Thousands of individual letter changes emerge, but it’s difficult to determine which ones have functional consequences. AlphaGenome ranks the variants most likely to be significant, allowing researchers to focus their follow-up studies.

Caleb Lareau from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who received early access to the AI, calls it the most comprehensive attempt to explain every possible change in the 3-billion-letter sequence of the human genome. Instead of testing hundreds of things, he can focus on a few after being guided to the right spot.

Trained on decades of data

The model builds on massive molecular biology databases produced over decades by publicly funded consortia. These include results from experiments tracking how certain mutations in human and mouse cells affect properties such as RNA production and levels of transcription factors.

By training on these datasets, AlphaGenome has learned to decipher DNA and identify both genes and non-gene sequences that orchestrate gene activity. The model can also identify genetic variants most likely to produce significant changes.

Useful for synthetic biology

The ability to predict how genetic changes affect gene expression becomes equally valuable for synthetic biologists. The AI can suggest whether newly developed genetic sequences would have beneficial effects before testing them in laboratory experiments.

DeepMind plans to release the source code and model weights when a peer-reviewed version of the paper is published. This will enable researchers to customize the tool for their own projects. Pushmeet Kohli, DeepMind’s vice president of research, says the company shared the model with external biosecurity experts who assessed that the benefits far outweigh the risks.

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Stone Age humans living near a lake in present-day Germany ran a “fat factory” to extract nutrients from animal bones, a new study shows. Archaeologists found about 1.2 lakh bone pieces and 16,000 flint tools at a site called Neumark-Nord.

Neanderthals crushed bones to get marrow, boiled them for hours and collected fat from the surface. This process needed planning: hunting, storing and setting up a special area. Fire use was also found at the site.

Scientists say this proves Neanderthals were smart and well-organised. They were not primitive, as often believed. Their skills helped them survive tough conditions with well-thought-out strategies.

“This attitude that Neanderthals were dumb — this is another data point that proves otherwise,” CNN quoted study coauthor Wil Roebroeks as saying.

Neanderthals lived in Eurasia and vanished 40,000 years ago. Earlier studies found they made yarn, glue, jewellery and cave art. New research reveals they also had a clever way of managing nutrition.

At the site in Germany, they boiled bones to get fat, which helped balance their diet. Experts say they likely knew that eating only lean meat without fat could be harmful.

This condition is now called protein poisoning. It causes weakness and can even be fatal. Early explorers called it “rabbit poisoning” when they faced similar problems from fatless meat.

Neanderthals, who weighed between 50 to 80 kg, could only eat a limited amount of protein daily. They ate protein around 300 grams without health problems.

This gave them just 1,200 calories, which was not enough for survival. So, they needed extra energy from fat or carbs. Since animal meat has little fat, they relied on bones for marrow.

Researchers found most bone remains at the German site came from large animals like horses, deer and extinct aurochs. Neanderthals mainly picked long bones with more marrow. It shows they smartly chose fatty parts to meet their energy needs for survival.

Smart survival strategies

Researchers are not fully sure how Neanderthals boiled bones. However, they likely used natural containers like birch bark, animal skin or stomach linings to hold water over the fire.

They might have made a fatty soup or broth, adding plants like hazelnuts, acorns, or wild fruits for taste and nutrition. These findings show that Neanderthals were not just basic hunter-gatherers. They planned well, did complex tasks and made full use of their resources.

Their smart survival strategies helped them get the most energy from their environment. Archaeologists have called these discoveries “exciting”. They believe it’s a big step in understanding early human intelligence and planning.