Posted by
timothy
on from the seconds-all-taste-the-same dept.
ygslash writes "The IERS has announced today that, after seven years, there will once again be a leap second this year. On December 31, 2005, the time 12:59 will last for 61 seconds."
Re:Shouldn't that be...
by
dextr0us
·
· Score: 4, Informative
A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2005.
The sequence of dates of the UTC second markers will be:
2005 December 31, 23h 59m 59s 2005 December 31, 23h 59m 60s 2006 January 1, 0h 0m 0s
Actually, its 12:00:00 then another 12:00:00.
-- "Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
Re:Two questions
by
Mudd+Guy
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Actually, it's not calculable farther in advance. The Earth's rotation is inconsistent enough that leap seconds are sometimes needed, but the need can't be predicted more than about a year in advance [1]. In other words, there is noise in the Earth's rotation period of about 1 second per year. Atomic clocks are a lot better than this (good to ~50 ns per year [2]!!!), so it's pretty easy to detect the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2005.
The sequence of dates of the UTC second markers will be:
2005 December 31, 23h 59m 59s
2005 December 31, 23h 59m 60s
2006 January 1, 0h 0m 0s
Actually, its 12:00:00 then another 12:00:00.
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
Actually, it's not calculable farther in advance. The Earth's rotation is inconsistent enough that leap seconds are sometimes needed, but the need can't be predicted more than about a year in advance [1]. In other words, there is noise in the Earth's rotation period of about 1 second per year. Atomic clocks are a lot better than this (good to ~50 ns per year [2]!!!), so it's pretty easy to detect the problem.
Sorry, I can't help with the second question.
[1] See this Wikipedia article.
[2] See this Wikipedia figure.