As I Live and Learn
 

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Leap Second Tonight!

I just found out there's going to be a leap second tonight at 11:59.59pm. Cool! That means one second before midnight there will be two seconds!

A leap second is like a leap day in a leap day (that being February 29th). It's added into the "calendar" to align our time keeping with time as defined by the Earth's rotation on it's axis and it's rotation around the Sun. The Earth actually revolves on it's axis once every 23 hours 56 minutes 04.09053 seconds (according to the astrophysicists at NASA), and it revolves around the Sun every 365.24 days. So, every four years we get an extra day - the leap day - because of the extra nearly quarter of a day each year that accumulates. As some of you will notice, it's not actually a full quarter of a day, which is why every 100 years we do NOT have a leap year! Anyway, back to the leap second....

"Time" accumulates more or less than we measure it as because the Earth isn't in precise day, hours, or even minute rotations. So to realign the atomic clock with the time of the Earth/Solar system, we need an extra second this year, and the people who watch the official atomic clock in England are adding that second tonight just before midnight.

Happy New Year!

Labels:



 

Spotlight Posts

1980s-1990s toggle

1992-1996 toggle

1996-2000 toggle

2000-2005 toggle

2006- now toggle


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?