Inverse - 🌎 Earth is spinning too fast

Good morning

August 08 2022

Your day-to-day errands can seem mundane, but our world is anything but — after all, it's a ball of water, iron, gas, and other materials careening through space and it, like your text messages after 10 p.m., can get weird. For instance, it can spin too fast — as is the case with a recent discovery, which could lead to (gulp) the need for a leap second, which, haven't we suffered enough?

It turns out, too, that volcanic eruptions can have a big impact — materials can reach the border between our atmosphere and space, leaving fingerprints in the highest levels. But hey, speaking of things you don't want to happen that could happen (like a volcano-induced tsunami), we have an interview with Nicholas Monsour, the editor behind Jordan Peele's divisive film Nope, a tale of an invasion by an otherworldly entity. But that's not all — read on to find out more about what Harley Quinn has in store, a stem cell therapy that could be a huge boon for blindness treatments, and a chonky lil' ancient mammal cousin that loved swimming.

What's New

Gotta go fast

Science

Earth is spinning too fast — the consequences may be unprecedented

Our home planet is in a hurry. On June 29, 2022, Earth completed the shortest day since scientists started keeping records in the 1960s, pulling off a full rotation 1.59 milliseconds faster than usual.

Terrestrial haste is a trend. In 2020, the planet recorded the 28 shortest days on record, and it kept spinning rapidly into 2021 and 2022. Before scientists could even verify that record-setting day time of June 29, our world almost outdid itself: It blazed through July 26, 2022, 1.50 milliseconds ahead of schedule.

Earth’s days getting shorter is no cause for alarm, because the actual time difference amounts to fractions of a second over the course of a year. But what is weird is that scientists don’t know what’s driving the current haste.

Movies

Science Fiction

Nope editor reveals the secrets behind Jordan Peele’s sci-fi monster

Nicholas Monsour has been right beside Jordan Peele to witness his transformation from TV sketch comedian to Academy Award-winning filmmaker. The two collaborated on Comedy Central’s Key & Peele and worked together on Us, Peele’s 2019 horror flick about murderous doppelgangers.

Most recently, the pair teamed up for this summer’s sci-fi banger Nope, a film Monsour says is about “why we’re obsessed with images and trying to own them and be in them.”

Inverse spoke with Monsour to learn about how the accomplished editor cut Nope to enhance the film’s themes and tone, the intricacies of Peele’s development process, and his take on the origins of the unidentified flying object that terrorizes the Haywood horse farm.

Focus

Innovation

Breakthrough stem-cell therapy could reverse genetic blindness

A promising method to treat blindness is to implant healthy light-sensitive cells into failing eyes. But these cell therapies— which have been in development for at least three decades — often fail because the implanted cells die rapidly or fail to incorporate themselves into the eyes. But new stem-cell research could potentially eliminate these roadblocks.

Experiments with human stem cells and dogs reveal that a cocktail of drugs that suppress the immune system could help implanted cells survive for months. In fact, the implanted cells even began integrating with the eyes, according to a new study published in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

Learn more

Inverse Interview

Television

Harley Quinn showrunners promise eternal romance

HBO Max may be in peril, but as far as Harley’s concerned, all that matters is her relationship with her best friend turned girlfriend, Poison Ivy.

After a two-year hiatus, Harley Quinn is back for its third season. Showrunners Patrick Schumacker and Justin Halpern spoke to Inverse about how Harley and Ivy will navigate their new relationship, which characters have newfound prominence in this cartoonish corner of Gotham City, and why Bane keeps referencing Sex and the City.

Read the full interview

Boom

Nature

Extreme Tonga volcano eruption left a fingerprint in space

On January 15, the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano in the Pacific Ocean unleashed a violent eruption as potent as up to 18 megatons of TNT. This explosion triggered an acoustic shockwave that spread across Earth, which produced a worrisome tsunami that traveled faster than those created more directly by the eruption.

In a new study published in the journal Earth, Planets and Space, atmospheric researcher Atsuki Shinbori explains how a vertical shockwave left an imprint on the ions floating more than 50 miles above Earth’s surface, and sent an early alert to some instruments in Japan ahead of the first tsunami wave triggered by the largest atmospheric explosion in human history.

Absolute unit

Science

Look at these chunky prehistoric “hippos”

Before the dinosaurs, Earth was home to strange, reptile-looking creatures called synapsids that roamed the land on four legs. Though some look reminiscent of crocodiles and turtles, they’re actually the early ancestors of today’s mammals.

Writing last month in the journal Palæovertebrata, researchers from Germany and France describe a newly discovered synapsid species — a chubby animal with a small head that fed on plants.

Behold

Meanwhile...

This tiny meteorite holds interstellar material from a distant supernova

New analysis reveals a key similarity between dinosaur and bird embryos

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO announces ten-year “reset” plan for the DCEU

'Daredevil: Born Again' leak throws release date into question

Today in history: American physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence — winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of the first particle accelerator — was born in Canton, South Dakota on August 8, 1901.

Song of the day: "You Spin Me Round," Dead Or Alive

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