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The Future of Leap Seconds
@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."
Time is an Illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
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.
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.
A slashdot reader having sex with a hot girl????????
Either the poster's definition of hot, girl or sex is seriously out of whack.
I like my beverages with warning labels!
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.
I don't get why being that anal about time keeping is so important anyway. I guess with all the high dollar electronic transactions that go on these days there and what not, but for the average chump going about day to day... if the sun is in the sky it's day time, if it's not, it's night. If it looks like it's in the middle of the sky it's time for lunch.
What's the big deal? Can someone enlighten me?
No sig for you!!
They vetoed the leap second, didn't they?
Hmmm..
"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.
A bird, a plane, No SUPERMAN
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.
It's about time someone did something to correct these errors.
(it's funny, go ahead and laugh, willya?)
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Interesting. So is there any way that we can use a similar technique to get Nov 2004 to arrive a little sooner? Please?
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.
Might as well make an event out of our nonsensical system of labelling the current time.
"all please stand witness, you will be amazed.
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.
-pyrrho
OK, we can slashdot a webiste, surely we can fix this. Ok, on 3 let's all start running west. 1...2...3...
running though is not so popular among this crowd...
OK, so the clock people don't want to have to calculate when leap seconds have or will happen when figuring out the time from A to B. And they also want noon to happen when the sun is highest in the sky, and summer to happen on June 20/21.
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??
I don't know about everywhere. I'd like to see the cruiseship that could hit Idaho
On the one side, I don't like the idea of time being shifted around like that because it could upset my schedule, what with a tenth of a microsecond popping up like that every year, but on the other hand, if we wait until there is a full second accumulated, it could be really hard to decide what to do with it...
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.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Leap year, leap seconds, leap minutes, daylight savings time ... change all of this stuff so that it cuts a year/seconds/minute/hour out of my workday, and you'll get my vote. Losing an hour of sleep overnight on a Tuesday does nothing for me, but skipping that mid-Monday meeting would be a God-send.
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
> SPEED UP THE EARTH!
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.
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
watch this
No! If they get rid of leap seconds, that'll cut my sex time in half!
Is France a member?
Do they take requests? ("I'd like an extra long sunset this Friday night... I have a date!")
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!