I thought it was just me, but the days really are getting longer. At midnight on New Year's this year, we'll all be adding an extra second to the time. Leap seconds were introduced in 1972 to reconcile the difference between the slowing speed of the Earth's rotation and the time tracked by a network of atomic clocks (which keep track of the time by observing Cesium-133 oscillations).
At 23:59:59, the time will increment to 23:59:60 before rolling to 00:00:00. If you won’t be lip-locked at midnight this year, this planned anomaly can be seen on any GPS’s NMEA stream or at time.gov. The degree of likelihood you might do actually watch for this is inversely proportional to the odds you’re likely to kiss anyone in the first place.
Whether or not you believe in linear time, now that you know you have an extra second, make good use of it. These only come around every few years.
“Time, time, time, see what's become of me”
Hazy Shade of Winter, 1966
Simon and Garfunkel
1 comments:
So now I have to choose between an extra second of smooch time and watching the rare time change? How sad is it that I feel torn between the two?!? :-)
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