Why is the Earth spinning faster? Is time speeding up? Australia’s experts give us their second opinion

The National Measurement Institute keeps track of time using atomic clocks, capable of measuring in nanoseconds (a billionth of a second), which are synchronised globally to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Illustration: Victoria Hart/Guardian Design

Time flies, and three days in July and August could flit by faster than usual this year – but only if your clocks are set to astronomical time.

A standard Earth day is 86,400 seconds. But on 9 July, 22 July and 5 August, scientists expect the planet’s rotation to quicken relative to the sun, truncating the days by a millisecond or more.