Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 456 posts

Re: The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

#31

Post by vilhelm_s »

CryZe wrote: post #14

How is this supposed to work? The rotation of the earth is not a constant. So we either scrap UT1 ("the atomic clock") or UTC ("the calendar"). Neither sound like an actual option. The latter would imply that at some (far off) point in the future you wake up at like 10pm as UTC and UT1 are now entirely mismatched (you may as well get rid of all time zones at that point).

I propose waiting a thousand years, so that the difference builds up to an hour, and then handle the adjustment as part of the daylight savings reform, which should just about have worked its way through the U.S. Congress and the EU institutions by then.

Re: The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

#32

Post by CryZe »

nousermane wrote: post #30
CryZe wrote: post #14

How is this supposed to work? The rotation of the earth is not a constant. So we either scrap UT1 ("the atomic clock") or UTC ("the calendar"). Neither sound like an actual option. The latter would imply that at some (far off) point in the future you wake up at like 10pm as UTC and UT1 are now entirely mismatched (you may as well get rid of all time zones at that point).

TAI - atomic clock, ignores earth rotation. UT1 - based on Earth's rotation only, strictly 86400 seconds per day; length of each second varies; takes a heck of a lot of effort (and time) to measure accurately. UTC - has same length of a second as TAI, but (for now) tracks UT1 to a precision of +/- 1 second. To achieve that, can have days that are 86399, or 86400, or 86401 seconds long. None of 3 is planned for scrapp…

Oh right, I confused the terminology, but the point still stands mostly.

Re: The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

#33

Post by Hamuko »

bilsbie wrote: post #29

Can anyone explain what the alternative is? Surely we won’t just get more and more out of synch with the earths orbit? Also why does it say the earth is slowing down but this year it sped up. Sounds quite impossible?

>Surely we won’t just get more and more out of synch with the earths orbit?

Why does being out of sync with the Earth's orbit matter?

Re: The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

#34

Post by amflare »

clnq wrote: post #20

> Or we could even decouple our sense of time from the Sun entirely, to create a single world time zone in which different countries see the Sun overhead at different times of day or night. A very interesting idea, but probably much too progressive.

I mean, if chaos is the goal, then sure... Let me refer you to: https://qntm.org/abolish

Re: The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

#35

Post by Akronymus »

kibwen wrote: post #26
kps wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct answer is obvious — to stabilize the Earth's rotation — but there are a few implementation details to work out.

If we simply detonate the moon it would cease affecting the Earth's rotation, thus solving the problem.

Wouldn't work afaict. You'd have to get rid of the mass, not just explode it.

Re: The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

#36

Post by a-priori »

SamBam wrote: post #22

> Leap seconds aren’t predictable, because they depend on to Earth’s natural rotation. This is surprising to me. Is the Earth's rotation so arbitrary?

Yes it varies unpredictably based on changes in the distribution of mass within the Earth from magma flows, air currents, ice pack movements, ocean currents, and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_length_fluctuations

Re: The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

#37

Post by Mountain_Skies »

kibwen wrote: post #26
kps wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct answer is obvious — to stabilize the Earth's rotation — but there are a few implementation details to work out.

If we simply detonate the moon it would cease affecting the Earth's rotation, thus solving the problem.

You've created the plot for 'Space: 2099'. Don't let Hollywood steal your idea.

Re: The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

#38

Post by basilgohar »

bilsbie wrote: post #29

Can anyone explain what the alternative is? Surely we won’t just get more and more out of synch with the earths orbit? Also why does it say the earth is slowing down but this year it sped up. Sounds quite impossible?

The slowdown is the long-term trend caused by drag of the Moon's gravity, but the speedups are sporadic and as a result of events such as massive earthquakes that cause the Earth's rotation to speed up as some significant mass falls further to the Earth's center. The conservation of angular momentum is the principle that leads to those brief speed ups, but they will not fully counteract the longterm drag caused by the Moon.

Edit: TLDR; Local maxima vs. overall trend.

Re: The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

#39

Post by testplzignore »

CryZe wrote: post #14

How is this supposed to work? The rotation of the earth is not a constant. So we either scrap UT1 ("the atomic clock") or UTC ("the calendar"). Neither sound like an actual option. The latter would imply that at some (far off) point in the future you wake up at like 10pm as UTC and UT1 are now entirely mismatched (you may as well get rid of all time zones at that point).

UTC is the atomic clock (TAI minus 37 seconds currently); UT1 is "Earth time".

We would use UTC. UT1 would end up only being used by astronomers and whoever else cares about the Earth's rotation.

By the time UTC and UT1 diverge enough to matter, humanity will have either destroyed itself or come up with a new time standard.

Re: The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

#40

Post by Dylan16807 »

CryZe wrote: post #14

How is this supposed to work? The rotation of the earth is not a constant. So we either scrap UT1 ("the atomic clock") or UTC ("the calendar"). Neither sound like an actual option. The latter would imply that at some (far off) point in the future you wake up at like 10pm as UTC and UT1 are now entirely mismatched (you may as well get rid of all time zones at that point).

So there are two things to note. First is that it takes a long time for the seconds to add up, and second is that when we're looking into the deep future the current system of leap seconds won't be enough even if we do keep them.
Post reply on HN