Bad Writing 101 - Episode 1

Here's an article from the LA Times...
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Thanks to hundreds of records of lunar and solar eclipses carved in clay tablets and written into dynastic histories, modern scientists have determined that the amount of time it takes for Earth to complete a single rotation on its axis has slowed by 1.8 milliseconds per century, according to a report published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society A....It may not sound significant, but over the course of 2½ millenniums, that time discrepancy adds up to about 7 hours.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-earth-longer-days-20161205-story.html
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Except, no, it doesn't. The writer confused two different things, real increase and "cumulative error" (aka propagation of uncertainty). In other words, the error that a hypothetical clock running for the last 2500 years would show between terrestrial time (based on atomic clocks) and universal time (the rotation of the Earth) is pretty large, but it isn't a measure of the actual increase in the length of the day. The author did make a rather stumbling attempt at explaining the two different types of timekeeping, but never realized her fundamental mistake.

To reassure you, it will take around 140 million years before we have to add another hour to the day. http://www.popsci.com/jessica-cheng/article/2008-09/ive-heard-earths-rotation-slowing-how-long-until-days-last-25-hours

Oh, and it's "millennia" not "millenniums." Not that I'm a grammar nazi, normally I don't care, but SHE WORKS FOR A MAJOR NEWSPAPER.

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