Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: a fool in paradise
Cumulatively won’t this adjustment eventually mean that high noon falls at 8am one day and 3pm another?

What I read of the article was poorly written. They are just arguing for a negative leap second adjustment. If accepted, it would likely happen in July, and the last minute of the month would be one second short.

There is really nothing earth-shaking about this. We regularly make adjustments like this, though in the past I believe they have all been additional seconds, rather than subtractive ones. If such a decision is made for this adjustment, it will be announced and published by IERS.

The following is from a file published by IERS and NIST.

# 4. The decision to insert a leap second into UTC is currently
#       the responsibility of the International Earth Rotation and
#       Reference Systems Service. (The name was changed from the
#       International Earth Rotation Service, but the acronym IERS
#       is still used.)
#
#       Leap seconds are announced by the IERS in its Bulletin C.
#
#       See www.iers.org for more details.
#
#       Every national laboratory and timing center uses the
#       data from the BIPM and the IERS to construct UTC(lab),
#       their local realization of UTC.
#
#       Although the definition also includes the possibility
#       of dropping seconds ("negative" leap seconds), this has
#       never been done and is unlikely to be necessary in the
#       foreseeable future.

34 posted on 01/06/2021 7:34:02 AM PST by zeugma (Stop deluding yourself that America is still a free country.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies ]


To: zeugma
For those interested, you might check out the following link, that is actually designed to be read by computers to keep track of leap seconds. https://www.ietf.org/timezones/data/leap-seconds.list
35 posted on 01/06/2021 7:41:08 AM PST by zeugma (Stop deluding yourself that America is still a free country.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson