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New research from the University of Vienna and ETH Zurich shows that climate-driven polar ice melt is lengthening Earth's days at a rate of 1.33 milliseconds per century — unprecedented in 3.6 million years. The redistribution of water mass from poles to equator is decelerating Earth's rotation faster than any natural process in the geological record, with implications for GPS navigation, financial systems, and global timekeeping, including the potential need for a never-before-attempted negative leap second.