The melting of the polar caps at the end of Earth’s regular ice ages has also played a halting role. These are long-term trends. More short-term effects include an earthquake in Chile in 2010 that sped up the planet and shortened the day by 1.26 microseconds. In fact, 29 June 2022 was the shortest day ever directly recorded. But something strange appears to be occurring in the short-term trends. Since 2020, the average day has been getting longer – in other words, Earth is slowing down. This goes against a previous pattern of the average day shortening for the half-century before that.