How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
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How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
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Re: How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
#2*could possibly affect an edge case of utc leap second distribution if Another shutdown happens during a leap second year (this is not one), AND lasts over 6 months. I get that it acks the clickbaity title at the beginning, but that coy bs doesnt help.
Re: How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
#3Leap seconds are the most stupidest thing ever. It's time to abandon UTC and start using what professional astronomers use: UT1
Re: How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
#4> Because TAI is not based on the Earth’s rotation, it’s not ever-so-slowly changing. It’s the measure of time against which UTC’s watch is occasionally correct. That correction is called a leap second: a 61st second that is sometimes added to particular minutes in UTC, like the very last minute of December 31, 2016. As of January 2019 there have been 27 such leap seconds inserted.
This seems backwards. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what the author is trying to say, and another poster could help clarify?
If UTC is based on the earth's rotation and TAI is based on cesium-atomic timekeeping, and UTC is slowing down, and TAI is "the measure of time against which UTC's watch is occasionally corrected," then how can UTC have leap seconds? Delaying for an additional second on December 31st would only make it one second even slower, exacerbating the problem.
I don't see how adding a delay to the slower clock is going to put it in sync with the faster one.
Is it instead that UTC is TAI, plus leap seconds to slow it down to keep it in sync with the rotation of the Earth?
Re: How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
#5> Because TAI is not based on the Earth’s rotation, it’s not ever-so-slowly changing. It’s the measure of time against which UTC’s watch is occasionally correct. That correction is called a leap second: a 61st second that is sometimes added to particular minutes in UTC, like the very last minute of December 31, 2016. As of January 2019 there have been 27 such leap seconds inserted. This seems backwards. Perhaps I'm m…
The delay is added to make UTC slow. The Earth is the slow clock, UTC ticks at the same pace as TAI, so sometimes we add a leap second to UTC to sync it with the Earth.
Re: How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
#6> Because TAI is not based on the Earth’s rotation, it’s not ever-so-slowly changing. It’s the measure of time against which UTC’s watch is occasionally correct. That correction is called a leap second: a 61st second that is sometimes added to particular minutes in UTC, like the very last minute of December 31, 2016. As of January 2019 there have been 27 such leap seconds inserted. This seems backwards. Perhaps I'm m…
It's the other way around - UTC is based on TAI plus an integer number of seconds offset, and this offset is adjusted (by the insertion of leap seconds) to keep UTC roughly in sync with the Earth's rotation.
Re: How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
#7Leap seconds are the most stupidest thing ever. It's time to abandon UTC and start using what professional astronomers use: UT1
Just like the amount of mass in a gram doesn't change based on location, time, or any other variable it's very important to have some measurement of time that is as constant and precise as possible. This helps us conduct science, where many types of experiments take place in less than a second. The measurements taken today should be readable decades or centuries from now without having to adjust for the slowing of Earth's rotation.
Now, maybe this unit of time needed for scientific purposes doesn't need to be the same one used for daily life.
Re: How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
#8Leap seconds are the most stupidest thing ever. It's time to abandon UTC and start using what professional astronomers use: UT1
UT1 is a disaster for many purposes. It is, quite simply, a measure of the Earth's current angle in space. This is ideal for pointing an Earth-based telescope. Trouble is, we can't reliably predict how fast this will tick. You may think leap seconds are bad, but how about if you simply can't know the current time without having a current measurement of the position of quasars in the sky? The length of a second isn't even constant.
TAI matches up with the atomic second, and UTC is that plus enough leap seconds to approximate UT1.
It all sucks, but this is reality. You can't fix reality. You'd have to tell the Earth to obey an atomic clock.
Re: How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
#9Leap seconds are the most stupidest thing ever. It's time to abandon UTC and start using what professional astronomers use: UT1
Just like the amount of mass in a gram doesn't change based on location, time, or any other variable it's very important to have some measurement of time that is as constant and precise as possible. This helps us conduct science, where many types of experiments take place in less than a second. The measurements taken today should be readable decades or centuries from now without having to adjust for the slowing of Ea…
> maybe this unit of time needed for scientific purposes doesn't need to be the same one used for daily life.
Don't think the unit is the problem, it's the offset. And when it comes to that, we already have a virtualization layer which assures alignment with the sun for social purposes: time zones. No need to add another one over TAI.
Re: How the Government Shutdown Warps Time Itself
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just like the amount of mass in a gram doesn't change based on location, time, or any other variable it's very important to have some measurement of time that is as constant and precise as possible. This helps us conduct science, where many types of experiments take place in less than a second. The measurements taken today should be readable decades or centuries from now without having to adjust for the slowing of Ea…
> maybe this unit of time needed for scientific purposes doesn't need to be the same one used for daily life. Don't think the unit is the problem, it's the offset. And when it comes to that, we already have a virtualization layer which assures alignment with the sun for social purposes: time zones. No need to add another one over TAI.
Except that’s not entirely the story of time zones. They’re political divisions. Some of them match up with the sun better than others. For instance, the sunset time gets pretty weird in LV over the winter.