Robbie Pitcher, age 11, of Kingston, Ont., Canada, for his question:

 Is it true that the earth is turning faster?

As you can imagine, the speed of the spinning earth is quite hard to measure. Hence we can expect some disputes among the experts.

Maybe you have heard a report that the earth's rotation speed is accelerating. However, most experts agree that the rotation speed is slowing down, though the rate of deceleration is too slight to be noticed by ordinary mortals.

At present, rotational slowdown seems to be adding about 25 billionths of a second per day. If this continues another 5 billion years, the day and night period will be 36 hours.