Thank God. I'm tired of having to get up at 2 am and move every clock in the house forward by one second.

"Without a correction, eventually our clocks would show the middle of the day occurring at night,"


So they've been averaging about a half second off per year.. so it'll take 7,000 years to move off rotation by an hour.

I don't think it's really a big deal.

I wonder what is causing the Earth to speed up these last few decades. It should be slowing down due to tidal interactions with the moon. Earthquakes, maybe?

Please do this. fark leap seconds.

As long as the atomic clocks are synchronized, does it really matter in a global environment if what the people see is off by 3 seconds?

If we're adding and subtracting Leap Seconds to account for changes in the rotation of the Earth who says we'll really end up off by many hours in thousands of years. Could it be that we will just average down and stay about the same?

Since 1972 Whibberley said only 24 leap seconds have been used and the rate has slowed because the Earth has been speeding up over the last few decades.

Increased speed = increased friction = increased warmth = global warming = suck it libs.

If you're spinning in circles in a swivel chair, and you bring your legs in close to you, you start to rotate faster. Stick your legs out, you rotate slower. Man is trying its collective best to build some legs for the Earth to stick out (skyscrapers) and slow the rotation thereby reducing friction, but the Earth's rotation accelerates anyway.

Therefore, man isn't the cause of global warming, man is actually fighting global warming, and we're losing despite our best efforts. I'm switching to gas-powered everything.

as long as i'm not alive anymore by the time that we have to re-correct the clocks again, i'm okay with this. but going through two big changes to time-keeping would just be too traumatic.

hawcian: I wonder what is causing the Earth to speed up these last few decades. It should be slowing down due to tidal interactions with the moon. Earthquakes, maybe?

No, liberals.

I see two options:
1) add the leap seconds only on Feb 29th. It's already an annoyance, so let all the timekeeping pain happen then.
2) add the leap seconds at 2AM on daylight savings day. At 1:59:58.725 AM, set your clock to 1:00:00.000

Other ideas:
Astronomers can STFU and GBTW. You're already using your own time system. It's called Julian Days. Just add Julian Seconds to that and carry on.

Feh, who needs accuracy? It's just for them durn sciency types anyhow.

mightybaldking:
Other ideas:
Astronomers can STFU and GBTW. You're already using your own time system. It's called Julian Days.

I think they're aware what their time system is called without your help.

""Without a correction, eventually our clocks would show the middle of the day occurring at night,"said Whibberley."

"...it is estimated it will take more than 200 years to register an hour's difference."

Hyperbole much there Whibberley?

Boondock3806: If you're spinning in circles in a swivel chair...

Sounds like fun. (^)

mightybaldking: I see two options:
1) add the leap seconds only on Feb 29th. It's already an annoyance, so let all the timekeeping pain happen then.


THIS. This was my first reaction to the issue. I then realized that someone, or several people involved with the project probably has already had that idea. And it was probably shot down for what they thought were good reasons. Or something.

/maybe they DIDN'T think of it, and we are just superawesome geniuses who should get 100k a year working for these folks as consultants