{"id":13904,"date":"2013-07-23T03:00:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T08:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=13904"},"modified":"2013-07-23T03:00:26","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T08:00:26","slug":"looking-before-we-leap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/13904","title":{"rendered":"Looking Before We Leap"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wait of the world<\/a><\/p>\n

Mainly about leap seconds.<\/p>\n

On the split-second level, \u2018leap\u2019 mediates between the precision of atomic time and the position of our Sun in the sky. It is worth noting that while a leap year is a year with an extra day (Leap Day \u2014 February 29, when turnabout is fair play), a leap second lasts no longer than any other second. Applied to a minute, a positive leap second creates a 61-second interval that is not<\/em> called a leap minute. (Nor would the 59-second outcome of a negative leap, should one ever be required, be called a leap minute.)<\/p>\n

A leap minute, rather, is a hypothetical way of putting off till tomorrow what leap seconds do today. If instituted, it would allow the powers responsible for time measurement and distribution to defer insertion till the leap-second debt reached 60, and trust some future authority to intercalate them all at once. But a leap minute would likely add up to a much bigger headache than the sum of its 60 leap seconds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure if the US has established an official position on the matter. I know there have been discussions about the pros and cons, both within the US and with international attendance, such as the conference mentioned in the article.<\/p>\n

Perhaps even more of an affront to British pride than the misplaced meridian is the fact that Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is no longer the world standard. GMT fell out of official favour in the 1920s, for semantic reasons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It may be worth mentioning again that in the US, GMT was used as the official, legal reference for determining the time and time zones until the 2007 America Competes Act, where it was finally changed to UTC (the change is spelled out in sec. 3570<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t mind additional leap second insertions. But then, I don\u2019t programme computers, or control air traffic, or perform any of the myriad time-sensitive activities that would make me a stakeholder in the leap-second debate. I am merely a person who still wears a wristwatch, owns a sundial, and takes an abiding interest in all aspects of finding, keeping, and telling time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From what I have heard and observed first-hand, it’s a pain to do this, and we’re just lucky that things haven’t gone wrong from the many potential problems<\/a> inherent to the issue. My own view is that counting on being lucky is a terrible standard operating procedure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The wait of the world Mainly about leap seconds. On the split-second level, \u2018leap\u2019 mediates between the precision of atomic time and the position of our Sun in the sky. It is worth noting that while a leap year is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}