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The Future of Leap Seconds

Posted by michael on from the stuff-you-thought-you'd-never-think-about dept.

@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."

2 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 0, Troll

    Typical educational level of Bush-bashers. He's not out of office until January 2005. And the extra time can be well-used, just ask Clinton and all the convicted felons who are walking around free today, due to the fact that he ordered them released from prison on his last day in office.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  2. Problem with calculating UTC for computers? by Steve+Cox · · Score: 0, Troll

    After a quick browse through the replies, I didn't see this mentioned -

    If UTC is allowed to become out of sync with 'normal time', how do you calculate UTC on your PC? At the minute, its quite simple - its the number of seconds since 00:00 01/01/70. Easy.

    If you no longer have leap seconds, UTC goes out of sync with the PCs clock - we would need to have software updates an OS patches to account for any gained leap seconds, and the point in time at which they occur(ed).

    If I talk about a time in the future - how do I convert it from UTC to 'normal' time?

    Of course I could have missed the point here, and leap seconds could be added to 'normal' time at regular intervals (there by making the calculation easy), but what if they are not?

    Steve.