Posted on 07/29/2005 6:03:12 AM PDT by OESY
What time is it when the clock strikes half past 62?
Time to change the way we measure time, according to a U.S. government proposal that businesses favor, astronomers abominate and Britain sees as a threat to its venerable standard, Greenwich Mean Time.
Word of the U.S. proposal, made secretly to a United Nations body, began leaking to scientists earlier this month. The plan would simplify the world's timekeeping by making each day last exactly 24 hours. Right now, that's not always the case.
Because the moon's gravity has been slowing down the Earth, it takes slightly longer than 24 hours for the world to rotate completely on its axis. The difference is tiny, but every few years a group that helps regulate global timekeeping, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, tells governments, telecom companies, satellite operators and others to add in an extra second to all clocks to keep them in sync. The adjustment is made on New Year's Eve or the last day of June.
But adding these ad hoc "leap seconds" -- the last... in 1998 -- can be a big hassle for computers operating with software programs....
On Jan. 1, 1996, the addition of a leap second made computers at Associated Press Radio crash and start broadcasting the wrong taped programs. In 1997, the Russian global positioning system, known as Glonass, was broken for 20 hours after a transmission to the country's satellites to add a leap second went awry. And in 2003, a leap-second bug made GPS receivers from Motorola Inc. briefly show customers the time as half past 62 o'clock.
...Because of these problems, the U.S. government last year quietly proposed abolishing leap seconds to the International Telecommunications Union, the U.N. body that tells the Earth Rotation Service how to keep time....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
A Russian military system went awry? Noooo way.
Sounds like I've read that somewhere.....OH YEAH....Revelation.
My vcr says 12:00.
and looked like "a string of pearls"...........
yeah mine says it is 12:00 and it's blinking....
You mean right now?
You mean the one that's chanted by the 'bot sycophants every time he acts like a bonehead?
Nope.
"Aren't you getting a little tired of the hackneyed "it's Bush's fault" sarcasm mantra in every damned thread?"
It's Bush's fault that it's in every damned thread.
(I'm really sorry about that. It's my first time. I'm so immature.)
brainwashed lemming.
None of this matters. We can control the length of the days and exactly how much daylight we receive from the sun at anyone point on the earth by simply manipulating the universe with that creative little tool they called "daylight savings time."
What's the big deal?
ow...
that taught me!!!
LOL
it must REALLY suck to be you right now with the economy growing and jobs being created faster than they are being lost and unemployment going down HUH?
LOL
stupid stupid troll
I think you left out Uranus. :)
Politics is lots of fun, but there are a few things that actually don't have anything to do with politics. The question here is whether we want to say 24 hours is equal to an earth's rotation, equal to 1/365.25 of a trip around the sun, or to always be the same amount of time regardless of the earth's and the sun's tiny variations..
We're taking a vote. Lots of people and I vote for it being the same.
Personally, I don't care, and there isn't much I could do about it if I did care, but I'm curious what, exactly, the U.N. is attempting to do.
At least if the U.N. is worrying about trivial things like this, they'll have less time to do the really dangerous things they're usually contemplating.
It's the latter.
The proposal calls for adding a "leap hour" every 500 to 600 years to compensate for sunrise getting later over time.
Despite the whining of the Euro-weenies, it would be possible to maintain two time systems, one with the occasional leap second and one with the leap hour, simultaneously so the world's largest telescopes can still function normally.
Thanks!
I guess none of us will live long enough to notice the difference anyhow...
Mike, every website needs it's provocateur and Willie is a fine one at that. Give him some props.
Willie, if you want to be a provocateur, you gotta be able to take some lumps without getting personal. Mike's alright.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.