Screw Years, How About Leap Seconds?

sorry i cant post much, the full article is only available to the poor shmuggs that pay....actually making them not poor...but whatever.

its an interesting topic, how we've shifted from adding and removing whole days to simply seconds, whats that?!

"Every year or so we figure out that Earth hasn�t been rotating quite as fast as we thought, so we add a second to the clock. And that messes up everything."

"Time is fundamental to so many things that we do, people take it for granted,� says physicist Ronald Beard of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. �But it�s a generated thing, not a naturally occurring phenomenon we�re just monitoring. We actually make time.� Nobody knows that better than Beard, who is trying to corral a rancorous constituency of experts into reaching an agreement on what time it is. The experts are arguing about the future of the leap second, an extra second added to the world�s clocks every year or so to keep the artificial constructs of hours and minutes in lockstep with the actual length of the day. "

Leap Seconds

Just more proof that "time" as we know it is one big fat lie!

"Time" isnt a lie, its just a gauge we go by.

You can always run by your own time if you want.

haha i try to run by my own.....but the school doesnt appreciate it when i decide that first period should start at 11.48 and the school dayshould end at 11.49, but hey thats just me

So Beard thinks it would be a good idea to redesign all of the clocks in the world to add a seconds at the end of the year? Or the end of February?

I'm sure he's thought it out and all, and I'm sure he's a really smart guy, but sometimes the trouble with being so smart is that there's no room left for common sense.

Whatever,
DeltaChaos

[Edited on 1-3-2004 by DeltaChaos]

I have that issue, I was going to post about it, There was a big debate over time at the time, , so i left it alone. Good find , My metal story will be at this same place next month.

i dont quite understand the severe frustration over a second or two...but who knows, maybe im just silly and outdated

a problem i see for people such as astronomers and computer programmers is that -- they need an absolute time reference. every time you 'add a rule', it makes computer programs obsolete and screws up the calculation from 'absolute time' to 'calendar / clock time'.