Leap Second

Blame it on Congress.

The effects are minimal for many years to come and most of us use time by the clock which is disconnected from the Sun by several minutes to more than an hour anyway,depending on the time of year and our time zone. We should make things that little bit easier and stop adding these pesky Leap Seconds.

Spend it recovering from the election.

The effects are not minimal, and getting rid of leap seconds does not remove all the issues from operational systems.

That’s right, better make the most of it.

yeah …here they come again “scientist” they always want to alter the planet. whats up with the extra second? probly they’re bored, and wanna be in the news. I HATE SCIENCE…I need to talk with S.Palin about this crap maybe me and her could use the extra second go moose hunting with N.sarkozy.

You could go even furthur JB, if it wasn’t for science, none of the world we live in today would exist. Nothing would exist.
I’m curious Ned, at what rate is the rotation of the Earth slowing? And at what point will the Earth show only one face toward the Sun? I know there’s a word for it, but dang it, I can’t remember it.

good. my watch is 1 second fast right now and i couldn’t figure out how to reset it

Has anyone checked to see if this has anything to do with global warming? Maybe my pickup caused this too.

Stop2think? This has nothing to do with whether the earth will be all right. The concern is the effect on computer operating systems and therefore on the technology you use every day. That includes the computer you’re using right now.

That’s an interesting point Andy. You know, with this, its not a problem so I don’t know what to call it, phenomenom sounds good, slowing of the Earth’s rotation period, you’d think the scientists would have come up with some sort of update to the clock. But there could be some other factors that we here don’t know about that could be limiting this. Only time will tell.

Dear Lawrence and Tom,
While “tidal lock” is the right name for the phenomenon, most part of this effect is provided by the Moon, not by the Sun. Being far less heavy, the Moon is much closer. So the immediate (immediate – at the time scale of billions of years) consequence of the tides is that some day the Earth will show the same face to the Moon. Taken that the Moon is already showing us the same side, this will be a perfect tidal lock, the celebrated 1:1 spin-orbit resonance (the kind of pas de deux wherein Pluto and its satellite Charon are moving).
Amasingly, this kind of motion was predicted (by qualitative arguments, with no fancy maths) back in 1754 by Immanuel Kant. In his short work “Untersuchung der Frage, ob die Erde in
ihrer Umdrehung um die Achse, wodurch sie die Abwechselung des Tages und der Nacht hervorbringt, einige Ver{\”a}nderung seit den ersten Zeiten ihres Ursprungs erlitten habe und woraus man sich ihrer versichern k{\”o}nne, welche von der K{\”o}nigl.,” known among the historians also as the “Spin-Cycle essay,” Kant stated that the Moon not only pulls the Earth, but also exerts a retarding torque upon its surface; this torque slows down the Earth’s rotation and lets go only when terrestrial days become as long as lunar months.

Dear Lawrence,
If you try to do the math, please be mindful that several billion years down the road the oceans will boil out. After that, tidal locking will be maintained only by the bodily tides, a circumstance that will slow down the rate of the Earth’s approach to the perfect lock.

Also be mindful of the math if you do the extrapolation in the other direction. The rate at which angular momentum can be transferred to the moon depends on the continent/ocean configuration, so this number is only valid for geologically recent times.

Not sure where the incorrect “seven leap seconds” informationc ame from but it wasn’t from the USNO press release which clearly states that 24 leap seconds have been inserted since 1972

No. The Bush years just SEEM longer.

Those pesky wind farms must be propelling the earth in the wrong direction. :)

I wonder how much closer will the moon get and how much it would affect the earth’s tide…
but this is an interesting fact indeed.

So tidal lock will never happen. The earth will be consumed by the Sun in it’s(the Sun’s) death throws long before 15 billion years. As the moon is moving further away as well, the rate of deceleration will also decrease.