Earth's journey is right on time

dailycamera.com ^ | Dec 30, 2003 | By Ryan Morgan, Camera Staff Writer

[e_engineer]

The Earth won't be having seconds this year, thank you.

And that has scientists across the world — including those who run the atomic clock at the National Institute for Science and Technology in Boulder — scratching their heads.

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Take a Colorado Ski Vacation Apparently, the Earth isn't slowing down as it used to, and no one knows why.

Flip your calendar back to 1972. That's the year the world began its current system of atomic time-keeping. NIST operates one of the clocks used to set "Coordinated Universal Time."

Scientists soon discovered they had a small problem: The rate at which the Earth travels through space had slowed ever so slightly, and as a result was completing its 365-day journey around the sun one second behind schedule.

To make the world's official time agree with where the Earth actually sat in space, scientists started having the atomic clocks count an extra "leap second" on the last day of the year.

"They came close to matching it, but they had to add a second to keep it in sync," said John Lowe, a NIST researcher who works in the agency's Time and Frequency Division.

For 28 years, scientists repeated the procedure. Then, in 1999, they discovered that the Earth was no longer lagging behind. It didn't need a leap second.

This is the fifth consecutive year that the Earth hasn't lagged behind schedule.

Fred McGehan, a spokesman for NIST, said most scientists agree that the Earth has been very gradually slowing down for millennia. But, he said, they don't have a good explanation for the five years it's been on schedule.

Possible explanations include the tides, weather and changes in the Earth's core.

Contact Ryan Morgan at morganr@dailycamera.com or (303) 473-1333.

[PatrickHenry]

PING. [This ping list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.]

[RadioAstronomer]

We have to account for leap seconds, as that's obviously a component (albeit small) in the equation.

Unless you use a .tle that was computed in UTC when your system is running in GPS time! :-) LOL

[PatrickHenry]

Earth has stopped slowing down in its orbit due to certain very sensitive and highly secret adjustments that I've made recently in my la-BOR-a-tory. That's all I can reveal at this time.

[r9etb]

Unless you use a .tle that was computed in UTC when your system is running in GPS time! :-)

You've done that too, huh?

Ah, well -- it's only 50 km at GPS altitudes.

[RadioAstronomer]

LOL! (ya cloning again?) Two million PatrickHenrys on one spot is causing it?

[RadioAstronomer]

You've done that too, huh?

ROFL! Yup!

[PatrickHenry]

Not cloning. But I can tell you that it involves aligning my bed with the direction of earth's motion. It would not be prudent to divulge more.

[RadioAstronomer]

Fingers in ears! LALALALALALALA! hehehehe

[RadioAstronomer]

Ping! :-)

[CobaltBlue]

The Apparent Magnitude is how bright a star appears to us hear on the Earth.

The music of the spheres? ;^)

[longshadow]

Man, after all that, and you DIDN'T bother to work the "Equation of Time" into your essay??????

I've heard of blowing an opportunity, but sheesh!

[Physicist]

OK fellow Freepers, Why is the Earth no longer slowing down in orbit?

Because it's wearing heavy boots.

No, wait...wrong question...

[jennyp]

I remember listening to Anonymous Male Voice ring in the new year at WWV and counting down those 61 seconds on my shortwave radio many years ago. (Talk about a geeky way to celebrate the New Year!)

[metacognative]

no longer encountering much space dust?

[VadeRetro]

From here.

Pictures help with some of those concepts. Very nice work!

[boris]

Gotcha. But: "IF the difference between UT1 and UTC approaches .09 seconds, a leap second is added"

0.09 seconds? Do you mean 0.9 seconds? Why add a leap second for a tenth-second difference?

--Boris

[boris]

Personally I have always felt that either the second or the meter needs to be redefined so that the speed of light comes out to precisely 3.0x10⁸ m/s.

I believe the current value is 2.9979x10⁸...it annoys me that it doesn't come out even.

--Boris

[boris]

This cam--from http://emsh.calarts.edu/~mathart/Clock_Cam.html embodies the Equation of Time for

The Clock of the Long Now.

[StormEye]

Whatever happened to Planet X?
It was supposed to show up in May of 2003 and cause all sorts of trouble.
I"m deeply saddened....