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Due to momentum conservation, you can speed up any free rotating object by pulling its mass closer to rotation axis. Now look at any webservice that shows air traffic live. There you can see a tens of thousands airplanes which are airborne continuously at any given moment. This number was significantly reduced at the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic. The mass of those airplanes in total may look insignificant compared to mass of oceans or various Earth's internal structures. However planes fly high, typically at 12 km of altitude, so the change of altitude at which their mass is located has more prominent effect than if they were objects that basically move around roughly same altitude. Due to pandemic, airplanes were grounded, so Earth sped up to maintain its momentum.

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How many Russian & Chinese atomic sources are included in TAI? <tinfoil-hat> What if a nation-state had an interest in forcing a negative leap second to cause GPS problems?</tinfoil-hat>

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