If the UTC-TAI offset remains at -37s, then it also means the UTC-GPS offset remains at -18s. TAI and GPS have a constant 19s offset from each system.
No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026
81–90 of 259 posts
Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
2035 is the agreed drop dead date. Everybody agreed that "Leap seconds" are a sufficiently bad idea that they should be replaced by 2035. Nobody has agreed how to fix it, and "Just turn them off" isn't technically legal. However, "What if there were Leap hours instead?" is technically legal and of course those hours would happen in the very distant future (likely after our civilisation is gone) so it's functionally i…
Farage is such an ass, the King should make him feed donkeys or something.
Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026
#83"To authorities responsible for the measurement and distribution of time" is just the best preamble ever.
For many years, the title of the leadership role over the various precise time products at the USNO was "Director of the Directorate of Time"
Do they have an insignia or patch? Can we buy it?
Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if that's what electricity producers do? If you are selling 50 or 60 Hz service, an extra second here or there must really mess things up.
Clocks used to be able to use the 60Hz cycle to track time, and grid providers would run slightly slow or fast ("time error correction") to get back into sync. A leap second would just be part of this. I believe in the US this error correction has been discontinued in the East and in Texas, but is still done in the West for some kind of non-clock "inadvertent interchange" reasons I don't understand.
Wait is that why my oven and microwave clocks are constantly getting out of sync by multiple minutes every year?
Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026
#85> The difference between Coordinated Universal Time UTC and the International Atomic Time TAI is : > > from 2017 January 1, 0h UTC, until further notice : UTC-TAI = -37s This means the atomic clock is behind the solar clock by 37 seconds? I also don’t understand the reference to 2017.
> This means the atomic clock is behind the solar clock by 37 seconds? If anything, it's the other way around. A UTC day is defined as exactly 86400 SI seconds. But an actual mean solar day is a few milliseconds longer (although the difference is not constant due to irregularities in the Earth's rotation--but the average difference is expected to slowly increase over time). SI seconds are counted by atomic clocks, so…
"In other words, we want UTC noon to be within a second of mean solar noon on the prime meridian."
Why?
If I travel 1 mile east or west of the prime meridian, my solar noon now comes 2-3 seconds earlier/later. It's nearly impossible to have your local time match your local solar noon. For most of the population, solar noon is, on average, 30 minutes off of 12:00 noon.
Plus, solar noon varies from day to day by 10-20 seconds. Check the charts out. https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/new-york
Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar
Because of you I have learned the word 'intercalation', and am grateful for it.
Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> for what appear to be good reasons, I might add
[Spoiler]
They are good reasons. Conspiracy theorists are able to persuade almost everybody that the reasons were bullshit, an excuse to seize power or something, and so the few who still insist this was necessary and mustn't stop are executed. Almost immediately after those executions, Mother Nature proves them right. So that leaves everybody: Guilty of having murdered their saviours and with no choice but to carry on with the very plan they had insisted was bogus...
There is a Chinese movie but I'm kinda surprised no Hollywood studio got themselves a rights deal and made a US-friendly movie where the Sun conveniently blows up slightly earlier and our heroes are vindicated and everybody agrees they were right all along.
Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026
#88My longevity will extend one second into the future in nominal terms, increasing the chance to reach the 22nd century a tiny bit.
Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026
#89Hear 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.
No, jet engines push against the atmosphere and the atmosphere is a part of the earth
Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026
#90Cool, I don't have to set my clocks back this December.