Do we really want leap seconds? - 09/21/13 01:50 AM
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-world-timek...ing leap second
If you aren't aware of the leap second it is a way of keeping our Earth centered days in sync with the universal time kept by atomic clocks. The problem is that the rotation of the Earth is slowing down. That creates problems with keeping accurate time over long periods of time if you use the Sun as a time keeper. So UTC time was invented. UTC is based on very accurate atomic clocks. Over a period of about 100 years there will be a slippage of about 15 seconds. So they invented the leap second to enable the clocks of the world to be adjusted so that they will stay in step. They add one second whenever the time drifts apart. That usually occurs at midnight on June 30, or Dec. 31. Now they are getting to worrying about the fact that when you adjust all of the clocks you may upset a lot of distributed systems that all have to be adjusted together and have to be in very close sync. So some people want to do away with the leap second and others don't want to.
The first thing that comes to my mind is: If they throw away the leap seconds how do they keep the calendar in sync with the clocks?
Bill Gill
If you aren't aware of the leap second it is a way of keeping our Earth centered days in sync with the universal time kept by atomic clocks. The problem is that the rotation of the Earth is slowing down. That creates problems with keeping accurate time over long periods of time if you use the Sun as a time keeper. So UTC time was invented. UTC is based on very accurate atomic clocks. Over a period of about 100 years there will be a slippage of about 15 seconds. So they invented the leap second to enable the clocks of the world to be adjusted so that they will stay in step. They add one second whenever the time drifts apart. That usually occurs at midnight on June 30, or Dec. 31. Now they are getting to worrying about the fact that when you adjust all of the clocks you may upset a lot of distributed systems that all have to be adjusted together and have to be in very close sync. So some people want to do away with the leap second and others don't want to.
The first thing that comes to my mind is: If they throw away the leap seconds how do they keep the calendar in sync with the clocks?
Bill Gill