Today (06/30/12) will be longer than yesterday

[MrAl]

Hello there,


This day in June will be longer than previous days by 0.6 seconds. That's because the Earth's rotation is slowing down by about 2ms per day and is now falling short of the atomic clocks. Thus the clocks will be adjusted today to make up the difference.
I think they are going to call it the, "Leap Second".
This is also a leap year this year.

 

[jpanhalt]

Wait until December 21st, then it won't really matter any more.

John

 

[MrAl]

Hi John,

Why not?

 

[jpanhalt]

The Myans predicted the world would end on that date, at least according to some "researchers."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_calendar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayanism

Since the Maya's were an advanced, but now extinct aboriginal civilization, it must be true.

John

 

[3v0]

As I recall 2012 is simply the end of their 'extended' calendar. After that you go back to the first day of the first month of the first year of the calendar.

Sounds like a heck of an excuse for a new years party!

 

[JimB]

Today (06/30/12) will be longer than yesterday

Somedays are a bit like that, they just go on for ever!

JimB

 

[MrAl]

Hi again,


Oh, THAT Dec. 21st, ha ha.

Yeah that is a misinterpretation or should i say ignorance of *all* the facts. Looking at the calendar out of context it might suggest there is nothing after that date, but taking it all in context it is just part of a bigger time period. Some have suggested the end of everything idea was made up just to get people to buy stuff.

 

[canadaelk]

So, why did the Mayans not forsee their own demise? E

 

[MrAl]

Hi,

Yeah very good point. "The world will end in 2012 but who knows anything else"
Maybe they thought they were put on earth just to tell other people when the world was going to end. Gee thanks guys!

I was mixing up the date for this 'event' with Camping's predictions. Funny thing about that though is that the Bible states that no man will know when this time is going to come, yet he had predicted the end several times now. That doesnt make sense to me at all.

Futurama did an episode where the world was going to end, and one of the characters said something like, "Oh my, one of the 200 end of the world predictions on the web is coming true". <chuckle>

Ya know what i should have called this thread is "Today will be longer than both yesterday and tomorrow" because the day after this timekeeping adjustment will be the same as the day before it. Its' the only day that needs about 1 second adjustment for a while.

 

[Mr RB]

This is terrible! All my clocks are going to be 0.6 seconds out!

 

[tcmtech]

Do what I do and show up an hour late everywhere.

Nobody even notices the .6 seconds change when I do that!

 

[Jugurtha]

This is nonsense. The Earth is flat and the Sun revolves around it Where have you been ?

 

[Sceadwian]

It's a full leap second not .6 seconds they don't adjust for fractions they just keep tally and round as observation dictates, otherwise they'd be adjusting for leap ms's every month or leap nano seconds every day.

Did you know one of the side effects of this, any clock that is based on straight GPS time will be running 16 seconds faster than UTC time, as of this last leap second? They never EVER screw with the GPS system timing. Though they might have to compensate for frame dragging on previous measurements if it stays active long enough.

 

[MrAl]

Hi,

Yes that is why they call it the "Leap Second". Actually each day only changes by a small fraction but if you wait enough days you have to adjust more but that way you dont have to keep adjusting. Same with the calendar leap years. I've calculated other leap problems in our calendar but they dont need to be incorporated for quite long time periods like 1000 years or something like that (dont remember the exact figure now).

 

[Sceadwian]

And not all days change the same because the change comes from various drag forces at elliptical extremes and increases in instrumentation precision. Daily or yearly adjustment is not required for anything of importance aside from micro second timing of your calendar. But if the leap seconds were not applied, over time atomic time would drift from celestial time, as it has now already over 16 seconds from GPS time. The absolute references of GPS is irrelevant, it's the relative reference that's important.

Again though I wonder if cell phone towers take this into account and adjust properly.

Something so simple as we perceive as time moving forward, compounds to be so much more complicated.

 

[JMW]

Of course cell phone companies are aware of this, they have special billing rate just for this exigency. Wait for for your next bill, it is on page 16D, 5th column, 83rd line, paragraph 19c

 

[Sceadwian]

What exigency? Leap seconds have been occurring since before I was born =) The drift between announced time and perceived time won't be noticed for a few thousand years, but it's still there.

As a friend of mine that works for a local telecommunications company mentioned the other day GPS time is used to synchronized virtually all large scale fiber optics networks.

If one of those machines corrects for GPS time vs true time... whole network subsections will lose connection.

 

[unclejed613]

so, if you have a WWVB (or whatever time/frequency standard exists in your part of the world) receiver in your clock or watch, it will automatically update, and you just set your other clocks from it.

also, my home computer has a script that runs daily at 2am: ntpdate time.nist.gov
this updates my computer's RTC to the NIST clock.

having a correct RTC on your computer will minimize packet expiration errors on your network.