wobble

Our Earth is wobbling!You wouldn’t personally notice it, though. While the wobble is pretty big, it takes a long time to play out. Over a human lifetime, the effect is so small as to be unnoticeable.But over humanity’s lifetime, the effect has been not only noticeable but profound. Earth’s wobble has affected climate, navigation and our calendar. It’s even had an impact on pop music.You’re already familiar with the two major motions Earth makes in and through space. One is its diurnal rotation, the daily spin it makes…

Strange variations across different measurements of the planet's surface have revealed periodic oscillations deep in Earth's heart.By studying minute changes in the length of Earth's day and the motion of Earth's poles, a team led by geoscientists Yachong An and Hao Ding of Wuhan University have determined that Earth's inner core wobbles with a periodicity of 8.5 years.This, in turn, has revealed a tilt between the inner core and the mantle of just 0.17 degrees, suggesting that Earth's inner core is denser in the…

Colorado’s economy is still growing, but it is losing momentum, leaving it vulnerable to outside shocks and a recession later this year, according to the latest ColoradoCast from Colorado State University. “I wouldn’t say this one right now is a recession forecast, but the risk of having a recession has increased with this one,” said Phyllis Resnick, executive director and lead economist at CSU’s Colorado Futures Center, which prepares the short-term outlook. Although still holding its own, the Colorado economy is much…

Closed canopy mangrove cover in northwest and Western Australia tracking the 18.6-year oscillation in tide range caused by the lunar wobble. Credit: Author provided, CC BY Over the summer of 2015, 40 million mangroves died of thirst. This vast die-off—the world's largest ever recorded—killed off rich mangrove forests along fully 1,000 kilometers of coastline on Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria.…

The Moon's gravitational pull on our planet's tides is just one of Earth's many steady thrums of life.Now researchers have found that lunar cycles not only synchronize the timing of animal migrations and mass spawning of corals but may also influence fluctuations in mangrove canopy cover.Given the growing interest in mangroves as natural carbon sinks, the study findings could improve our understanding of how much carbon mangrove ecosystems are likely to draw down and sequester in the coming decades.Understanding the…

The Earth had its shortest ever day this summer, thanks to a wobble in its axis which meant it completed a single spin in a fraction of a second less than 24 hours.June 29 was 1.59 milliseconds shorter than 86,400 seconds, or exactly 24 hours, according to the website timeanddate.com.  In recent decades the Earth has been more likely to slow down, giving marginally longer days. But in the last few years, that tendency reversed, and the days have been getting shorter and shorter.If the Earth continues to speed up, this…

Sony has cut its annual profit outlook, warning of weaker PlayStation game sales. The forecast comes as Sony revealed it shipped 2.4 million PlayStation 5 consoles in its recent quarter, up only 4 percent from the 2.3 million shipped during the same period last year. PS5 lifetime shipments have now reached 21.7 million. While hardware sales are slightly up year over year, software sales have plummeted 26 percent. In an investor call, Sony blamed the game slump on a lack of big PlayStation titles this year compared to…

Transaction freezes at Celsius Networks, which we reported on a few days ago, seem to be just the start of another stormy week in cryptocurrency. Binance has been sued over the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin, and Coinbase — one of the biggest cryptocurrency platforms — cut over 1,000 jobs ahead of difficult economic conditions. The layoffs were abrupt. Coinbase cut affected employees' system access at the same time as the announcement, to prevent "rash decision" by outgoing staff. TerraUSD's value collapsed in May,…