Atomic clock scientists suggest shortening minute to 59 seconds

NY Post ^ | January 5, 2021 | Hannah Sparks

[BenLurkin]

Data shows our former 24-hour daily rotation is decreasing incrementally, making the day marginally shorter. For example, Sunday lasted only 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59.9998927 seconds, according to TimeAndDate.com. And though the planet’s rotation rate may speed up or slow down slightly from day to day, due to natural terrestrial and celestial alterations, astronomical calendar trends indicate that recent years have become shorter overall.

Case in point, 2020 beat 2005’s shortest day 28 times, and 2021 is slated to be about 19 milliseconds short of a typical year, with an average daily deficit of 0.5 milliseconds.

The world’s clock watchers are used to tinkering with time. Since the development of the atomic clock in the ’60s, “leap seconds” have been added 27 times to make up for slowing rotation, according to EarthSky.org. However, the last time the adjustment was called for was in 2016. Since then, Earth has begun rotating faster than usual, and now scientists suggest a possible “negative leap second” in order to bring time into equilibrium with our position in space.

[mathman1]

Something is wrong here and the scientist did not really mean this and was probably misquoted. If you reduce a minute by one second, you will reduce each day by 24 minutes or cycle through an entire day every 60 days. Noon will switch to midnight and midnight will switch to noon every 30 days with the accumulated reduction of 24 minutes each day. There is a big difference between changing a minute and changing a year by 1 second.

[SunkenCiv]

Great, I’ll get some extra days I’d otherwise have missed. ;^)