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No More Leap Second?
WerewulfX writes "CNN reports: "In a phenomenon that has scientists puzzled, the Earth is right on schedule for a fifth straight year." Update yeah, this is a repost. Whatever- it's a holiday. Nothing else to post :)
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Exactly how do they figure out where the Earth is supposed to be down to a given second?
I understand Atomic clocks and how they work - but I don't understand how scientists can deduce where the earth should be to the exact second and correct it as such.
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How about instead of replacing slashdot, Taco just gives a hundred or so random subscribers the ability to mod a story as a dupe before it is officially posted for everyone else to read? It wouldn't be much harder to implement then mod points or metamoderation. If it wasn't a dupe then noone would have to do anything, but if it was a dupe then those "lucky" few could get someone's attention by clicking a "This is a dupe" link. Regards, Steve
I don't think this should be that suprising. It is widely known that the moon's orbit is increasing. The effects of this is slowly causing the tides to be less severe. It is also slowing the earth's rotation. Eventually the moon will be in orbit around the equator, and there will be no more tide. I think there might be a good chance that the loss of the leap second could be related to this.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
If the Earth is assumed to be a homogeneous sphere and the rotational axis is assumed to be the straight line passing through the north and south geographic poles, the moment of inertia of the Earth is I = MR^2 where M is the total mass of the Earth and R is its radius. The kinetic energy of a rotating Earth is given by K = 1/2 I w^2, where w is the angular velocity.
The energy associated with an angular velocity which is increased by 1 second over a year is equivalent to an extra 1.6e22 Joules of energy or 40 times the annual energy consumption of mankind (DoE 1999). A detailed analysis and matlab script are available here
Yeah, this is a rereply. Whatever. It's a holiday. Nothing else to reply to.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
But haven't you seen their new advertising campaign? They've reformed! Everyone likes AOL now, even Snoop Dogg!
I personally expected them to give up on their CDs a while ago, but there's no accounting for marketing...
True story.
> It takes half a second to scan the headline and realize that its a repeat
Did you notice this is the same kind of logic some spammers use when they try to convince others that spamming is harmless ? Something along the line of "It just takes a second to read, and if you don't like, just ignore it.".
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
When (greater) Sweden was going to change from Julian to Gregorian calendar they stuffed it up, got one day out of sync with all Julian countries, so to get back in sync they added an extra leap day, creating the only 30th Feb in history.
They eventually made the change from Julian in 1753 by having (gregorian) 1st Mar 1753 after (julian) 17 Feb 1753 removing ten days.
Makes a leap second seem a bit insignificant....
If you have no idea about Julian (as in Ceasar) and Gregorian (as in pope) calendars, have a look here