No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026 • Hacker News Board

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#71

Post by wongarsu » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:48 PM UTC

returningfory2 wrote: post #59

stvltvs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The changes in Earth's rotational speed that leap seconds help account for affect the whole globe. Why shouldn't the effects be noted in the global time standard?

Same with leap days though? The point is that it's weird that we handle a day every 4 years off in a different way to a couple of second being off.

Don't we handle them mostly the same? In a leap year, the month of February gets a 29th day, labeled 29. On a leap second, one of the minutes gets a 61st second, labeled 60. Or we drop the 60th second, and second 58 is followed by second 00 of the next minute.

The notable differences are that

1) the leap second happens at the same time globally (23:59:60 UTC), while leap days start at 00:00 local time

2) leap seconds happen at irregular intervals

3) leap seconds are nearly universally implemented wrong, because the ability to show :60 on a second display for for one second at most twice per year is just not worth the implementation complexity

You could argue about 1, but the alternative would lead to much more complicated timezone math (time zones can be an additional one second apart from each other depending on whether the leap second is already applied) for very limited benefit. Number 2 seems unavoidable, and 3 is entirely unintended, just the way things have worked out in real life

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#72

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:48 PM UTC

delichon wrote: post #21

Hear me out. We can just mount jet engines along the equator and rotate them 180 to gain or lose time. And then connect them to my snooze button.

Wouldn't it just be easier to have Superman fly around the planet a bunch of times really fast to do the same thing? Then you wouldn't have to worry about having to deal with all of that engine maintenance.

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#73

Post by summarybot » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:48 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #37

nullorempty wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy :) I think that would come with IERS Tax.

You have to go to the ends of the earth to cancel.

The real problem is finding the antipodal help desk without digging.

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#74

Post by Polizeiposaune » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

delichon wrote: post #21

Hear me out. We can just mount jet engines along the equator and rotate them 180 to gain or lose time. And then connect them to my snooze button.

It would appear that this has worked as they haven't had to insert leap seconds for quite a while.

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#75

Post by tenthirtyam » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #57

delichon wrote: post #21

Hear me out. We can just mount jet engines along the equator and rotate them 180 to gain or lose time. And then connect them to my snooze button.

The problem is future societies harvesting the engines for interstellar probes. This problem has been discussed in a series of books by Larry Niven.

There's a graphic novel by Cixin Liu "The Wandering Earth" where they not only stop Earth's rotation with this method, but also propel Earth out of the solar system (for what appear to be good reasons, I might add). Can't quite remember what fuel they used for the engines.

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#76

Post by lloeki » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:54 PM UTC

_alternator_ wrote: post #50

doctoboggan wrote: post #30

What causes the unpredictability in this? I would have guessed we have earth's rotation and orbit down to many decimals. Does geological activity, weather, or something else cause rotation speed differences that we just can't predict?

In short, yes, the weather, geology, and signicantly, human movement of water via aquifer draining and dam building, as well as glaicial and ice melts, all contribute to unpredictable changes in the earths rotational period, as well as the axis of rotation. The models for this are IIRC trigonometric polynomials of fairly low order, so even if we could model the unpredictability perfectly, truncation error would limit…

> Russia needed time to update glassnoss satellites

GLONASS maybe? or really glasnost era satellites?

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#77

Post by babypuncher » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC

returningfory2 wrote: post #59

stvltvs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The changes in Earth's rotational speed that leap seconds help account for affect the whole globe. Why shouldn't the effects be noted in the global time standard?

Same with leap days though? The point is that it's weird that we handle a day every 4 years off in a different way to a couple of second being off.

Leap days are predictable whereas leap seconds are not.

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#78

Post by raverbashing » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

t1234s wrote: post #27

They should have a global holiday to celebrate the people who maintain time/date related code in OS kernels that keeps the world from imploding.

Lol the Kernel is "easy" it's userspace and distributed systems that are a b*tch

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#79

Post by tialaramex » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

ortusdux wrote: post #58

t1234s wrote: post #27

They should have a global holiday to celebrate the people who maintain time/date related code in OS kernels that keeps the world from imploding.

I like the argument that we should have 12 months that are exactly 30 days long, and then merge whatever is left into a single timeless holiday.

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#80

Post by Epa095 » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 4:01 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #48

_joel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really, my I just don't have the time to keep up with this.

A leap hour wouldn't affect you. In practice it will never affect anyone because it's a legal fiction, but even if you pretend to believe we would actually introduce this "leap hour" it would be in the distant future long after we're all dead and if there are still humans who have any idea the year 2026 happened they're not sure which of Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, Tony Stark and John McClane were real people. Edited…

Up until now we have added 1 leap second every 2 year (27 leap seconds since 1972). So if it continues like this, in 7200 years it would be 1 whole hour, and in "only" 3602 years it will be closer to the next hour than the previous (so a natural time to add the leap hour).