Ancient Cuneiforms Reveal Earth is Slowing Down, Days Extended by 7 Hours

Are you always running out of time? Celestial records that expanded over the last 3,000 years show that Earth's spin is slowing down, making our days on the planet 7 days longer over the past two and a half millennium.

According to a report published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, for each century, the Earth's speed to complete a single rotation in its axis slows by 1.8 milliseconds per day. This might seem an extremelty short time; however, if you add up the number, this means that there's a seven-hour time discrepancy in the past two and a half millennium.

Leslie Morrison from the Royal Greenwich Observatory explained to Live Science that this time difference over the past millenniums is vital in understanding how the planet Earth has changed physically in shape.

To come up with this difference, Morrison and her team used ancient clay tablets or cuneiform from the Babylonians discovered in the 1800s. These Babylonian ancient tablets revealed records of solar eclipses, among others. Apart from the Babylonians, the researchers also studied eclipse observations from various ancient culture in China, Greece and other Arab regions.

"The descriptions of a total solar eclipse are so graphic. When the days suddenly turn to night and the stars appear," Morrison said of the Babylonian cuneiform.

The researchers found out that in 720 B.C., a seven-hour time discrepancy showed when they compared the ancient tablets and calculation from climate models.

This discrepancy, as geophysicist Duncan Agnew, who was not related to the study, noted, started at end of the last ice age, where Earth acted like a "memory-foam mattress [that] gradually rebound[ed] as the ice retreats."

"That discrepancy is the measure of how much the Earth has been changing over this period of time," Morrison further noted.