The Future of Leap Seconds 429
@10u8 writes "Since 1972 precision clocks around the world have ticked using atomic seconds, but earth rotation is slowing down. Leap seconds have been inserted in order to keep noon happening at noon, but they upset some timekeepers. Recent discussions have considered
discontinuing leap seconds in UTC, and a colloquium in Torino next month will present results. It is a matter of international significance."
How cool a job is "Timekeeper"? (Score:2, Funny)
"I am a keeper of the time."
I hope... (Score:5, Funny)
S2B bugs, here we come! (Score:3, Funny)
Excuse me while I stock up on food, medicine and ammo.
Every four years (Score:1, Funny)
Re:S2B bugs, here we come! (Score:1, Funny)
Lear years rock!!!! Also, you are dumb.
That's great, but Indiana won't participate (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why does this mean anything? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, let's bicker over whether we should be bickering over leap seconds. Much more productive.
Obligitary Hitch Hiker quote (Score:4, Funny)
Time measuerments that make sence... (Score:5, Funny)
Me: Wanna go have sex?
Hot Girl: OK! When?
Me: I'm on lunch break in 3 Maxtors and a Tape.
Hot Girl: I'll pay for the Hotel room.
Re:Actual effects (Score:1, Funny)
Re:No leaps needed... (Score:1, Funny)
The easiest solution to all this is (Score:5, Funny)
I propose we keep the earth spinning at a constant rate by detonating thousands of nukes at certain places once every four years. This will produce a Catherine Wheel effect and the earth will speed back to its original spin rate.
I am going to patent this idea but I fear itll be 500 years before I get it processed.
Re:The easiest solution to all this is (Score:1, Funny)
Re:S2B bugs, here we come! (Score:4, Funny)
2. I'm actually rather smart, but sometimes instead of a word's last letter I type the next word's last letter. You may classify it as mild dyslexia; it's mostly not a problem since most people can understand what I meant from context.
3. The person sitting next to me right now has been using excessive amounts of glue for the last few minutes; I'm not sure what its purpose was, but some of you CSI fans can no doubt explain how certain types of industrial-strength glue can cause synapses to misfire.
4. Again, I apologize for any inconveniece. As a token of good will, please accept this coupon, good for ignoring one (1) typo or grammar error in any future slashdot posting. Expires 6/18/2003.
Re:How cool a job is "Timekeeper"? (Score:5, Funny)
This doesn't make any sense at all (Score:2, Funny)
Either the poster's definition of hot, girl or sex is seriously out of whack.
Re:an attempt at a summary.... (Score:5, Funny)
Why not?
Asshats from the Industrial Revolution days make us do a frickin' "leap hour" twice a year anyways, one of which violates causality. Fuckin' Daylight Savings Time.
What drooling asshat decided that it'd be a good idea if, every year, there was one day when everyone's heart/respiration rates slowed down to one beat/breath per hour, and about six months later, these same people should be able to start a 20 minute download that finishes 40 minutes before it started?
Fine if you've got a black hole nearby for the former, and fine if you can travel faster than light for the latter.
The day we have those technologies, fine. Until then, no, no, no, no, no, these are bad, bad, bad, bad, bad ideas.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
What's the big deal? Can someone enlighten me?
I bet it was France... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:That's great, but Indiana won't participate (Score:5, Funny)
Given Indiana's history with keeping time, probably half the counties will participate and half won't. And some will just switch to the Mayan calander and be done with it.
Umm.. yeah. (Score:2, Funny)
"matter of international significance"
Hmmm... I know!
echo "matter of international significance" | perl -p -e 's/t..n[^s]+//';
Ahh. Now *THATS* more like it.
I know who's fault this is! (Score:3, Funny)
When he messed around with the Earth's rotation to save Lois Lane, he got lazy and messed it up by a tiny bit. Now look whats happened, we're off by a couple seconds now.
This is what happens when you get an alien to do a human's job.
Oh, but it is... (Score:5, Funny)
It's about time someone did something to correct these errors.
(it's funny, go ahead and laugh, willya?)
Re:The easiest solution to all this is (Score:4, Funny)
You know your 25 MHz computer from 10 years ago? Guess what, now that days are longer, it's 25.001 MHz!!!
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How cool a job is "Timekeeper"? (Score:3, Funny)
"ok..."
Re:S2B bugs, here we come! (Score:3, Funny)
Why Stop at Leap Seconds? (Score:4, Funny)
It seems to me that we should get rid of the concept of seconds altogether. The second was devised in the Sumerian culture, along with such bizarre ideas as a circle having 360 degrees.
The French of course stole the concept of decimalization from Thomas Jefferson and applied it to a variety of measurements, but failed to carry it to a good conclusion by decimalizing time (it seems everything French starts off well but is never really completed).
It seems to me that real progress should be made by dividing the day up into decimal units of time, and the circle into decimal units of arc, thus eliminating the second as a unit of measure.
Re:an attempt at a summary.... (Score:3, Funny)
Might as well make an event out of our nonsensical system of labelling the current time.
Re:Obligitary Hitch Hiker quote (Score:2, Funny)
Except when the guy you just stopped for hasnt showered for a week...
Re:Is it time to change time? (Score:5, Funny)
What's this "today's precision" bullshit? We've been having this problem for thousands of years.
For centuries, peoples dickered back and forth about how many 28-day lunar cycles ("months") were in a year. Some said 12, some said 13. The concept of fractions apparently escaped these simple folk.
Then the Romans came along. Not to be daunted by silly things like "reality," they declared that the lunar cycle was really 30 days, and that there were exactly 10 of those months in a year. While they were at it, they delcared pi to be exactly 3.125. To make things work out a little better, they threw in some extra days between a few months whenver they felt the need. The Latin names for these periods translates roughly to "Not really a month."
That got real old real fast so they threw in two more "real" months, and juggled around the lengths of the months just because they could (They're Romans, they ruled the world, yadda yadda yadda).
That one actually lasted a few centuries, at which point they started to admit that things were still screwy (in the sweltering heat of January), which was also the same time when some guy named after a salad was thinking he was Alexander the Great. The Senate told saladm boy to go fix things (apparently smacking cheese-eating surrender monkeys around qualifies one to make a calendar). Lo and behold he did, declaring that a year was 365.25 days long (ie. every fourth year had a full extra day). Ever humble, he took the time to re-name a month after himself. Feeling insufficient in some department, he also shifted around some days so that his own personal month was longer than most.
For a group of people that had no concept of zero, this system worked pretty well for a millenium or so, when it became obvious that things were getting screwy again. This time, the folks in Rome asked some guy with a funny white hat named Greg to help sort things out. Apparently not as experienced in invading France as salad boy was, he decided he had to plagiarize somebody else's work. He found some insane scribblings from some Poloc kook who figured out that a year was "really" 365.2425. Because the Poloc was loony (he said the earth went around the sun, of all things!), Greg felt comfortable with taking that number without admitting where he found it.
The system work, but the folks Greg worked with had a bit of a bad reputation at the time. To the west, there were a bunch of political crackpots who called themselves "Complainers" or something like that, and to the east there were a bunch of people in even funnier hats than Greg's who all spoke Greek. So it took a little bit of time for "Greg's Nifty Calendar" (why name a month after yourself when you can rename the whole damned calendar?) to catch on, which is why nobody can figure out when Washington's birthday is and why the October Revolution took place in September.
And even now there are all sorts of people from Newton to Einstein that say that even that calendar is screwed up! Greg's plagiarized number was off by 0.0003 days! That's almost 26 seconds! Heck, after a few thousand years that's a hole big enough to drive a Mack truck through, and then where will we be?
"With our global economy (weather we like it or not) times need to be synced across the world."
Between the Greek-speaking folks still thinking Greg was the anti-Christ and two groups of people blowing themselves up in the Middle East still trying to make the whole lunar cycle thing work out, we can't even agree on what day it is!
Leap second, no leap second, it doesn't really matter to me. I'll always have NTP.
Re:an attempt at a summary.... (Score:2, Funny)
watch while I move the SUN ITSELF BACK in the sky, ONE HOUR!
there, done!"
"hey, he didn't move the sun, I saw him, he just change the time setting on the clock!"
"did not"
"yes you did"
"not at all, the sun is now in the wrong place, a full HOUR different from where it was yesterday at this time."
"It is not."
"is too"
and so forth.
Big Deal (Score:5, Funny)
running though is not so popular among this crowd...
Re:Time measuerments that make sence... (Score:5, Funny)
There is an obvious solution! (Score:1, Funny)
There is a simple solution:
Build a pair of giant rocket to control the rotational speed of the earth. Then just give it a 'kick' every now and then to do stuff like countering tidal drag and such. You could even get rid of leap years if they were powerful enough!!
NASA isn't even using its last Saturn Vs anyway.... Might as well put them to good use. Or, if that's not enough, we have like 10,000 nukes ready to go.
What's the point of a massive, bloated arms race if you aren't going to use it to impact the rotation of Earth itself??
Re:Accuracy isn't everything... (Score:1, Funny)
I'm divided (Score:2, Funny)
I mean, do I go on vacation, read a book, learn a new language? What to do with the extra time is just too huge a responsibility.
My Proposal for Leap Things... (Score:3, Funny)
America Is To Blame (Score:5, Funny)
America is to blame! We are only 5% of the Earth's population, but we use 80% of the angular momentum. Scientists have warned us for years about global slowing, but big business Republicans, and Democrats with large angular momentum consuming projects in their districts refuse to address the issue. The only viable solution is to make papier mache puppets and parade them down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Leap leaps (Score:3, Funny)
I wholeheartedly agree. We can shed some mass temporarily and help the earth spin faster by "leaping for leaps." Every few months or so everyone on a given continent will jump up at the same time. I'm sure it'll all work out just fine. Organize a "leaps for leaps" chapter in your town today.
But don't stop The Core! (Score:3, Funny)
I wouldn't be so quick to suggest tampering with the earth's rotation. I recently saw a very intellectual documentary about what can happen if the earth's core ever stops rotating. Birds would fall from the sky, people with pacemakers would keel over dead, and entire football stadiums would be electrocuted by superstorms. All sorts of crazy shit that you wouldn't expect happens when crazy scientists start messing around with the earth's rotation.
GMD
My sex life! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why Stop at Leap Seconds? (Score:2, Funny)
I thought it was William of Occam...
IERS (International Earth Rotation Service) (Score:4, Funny)
Is France a member?
Do they take requests? ("I'd like an extra long sunset this Friday night... I have a date!")
Re:IERS (International Earth Rotation Service) (Score:4, Funny)
Great news! (Score:3, Funny)
This is the best news I've heard in a very long time! I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that both day and night are way too short. How long do we have to wait until the day will be 25 hours? Aaaahh... I'm looking forward to that extra hour of sleep!
Re:America Is To Blame (Score:3, Funny)
It's the failure of the world's industrialized nations to use renewable power sources. By drilling for oil, millions of tons of heavy crude are removed from the the depths of the earth and brought to ground level. Since angular momentum is conserved, the earth's rotation slows slightly to compensate for the now-larger moment of inertia. Extraction of metals from mines also contributes to the problem.
Granted, we have in part compensated by dumping large amounts of waste into deep parts of the ocean, and cutting down trees--but it's not enough! We need to begin a massive campaign to raze the forests and dump mercury and lead into oceanic trenches. Hopefully, we will one day be able to restore the Earth's rotation.