I heard the weirdest ad yesterday evening!

[thewayne]

Listening to an NPR podcast. Normally I flip past the ads, but I was in traffic and wasn't able to at the moment, and I heard an ad for ADP business services. ADP used to be just a payroll processing company, but they've expanded their offerings.

The ad started with 'What if a solar flare added an extra hour to the day?' It was an ad promoting their business planning services.

WHAT THE EVER-LOVING EFF ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT?

Seems to me the only way for the earth to gain an extra hour a day would be for it to slow down approximately 1/24th of its rotational speed. And for this magical solar flare to do this instantaneously, the results would be kinda catastrophic, I would think!

Now, the earth's rotational speed IS slowing down, just like the moon IS slowly moving out of its orbit with the earth and will eventually leave entirely and go cruising through space all on its own until it's captured by another orbital body.

But for the earth's rotation to slow by 4%? That would be bad, mmmmkay? At least international and trans-oceanic air travel would be a bit quicker.

Comments

[conuly]

Even if a solar flare or some other catastrophe added an hour to the day, we'd still need to sleep approximately 8 hours for every 16 hours awake.

[thewayne]

I wonder if average circadian rhythms would eventually adjust to 8 1/3 hours.  But for me, 7.5 hours is the amount of sleep that works for me.

[disneydream06]

That is a bizarre ad. :o
There must be a better way to sell their services. :o
Hugs, Jon

[silveradept]

What kind of normal disasters did they think they could handle if they lead their advertisement with solar flares causing rotational slowdowns of the planet?