How will you use your extra second?

Gollnick

Gollnick

Musical Director
Joined
Mar 22, 1999
Messages
29,258
Don't forget that the last second of 2005 will be sixty-one seconds long.

Leap seconds are necessary from time to time to compensate for the slowing of the earth. Even the finest Rolex (at the risk of sending this thread off to G&G) doesn't compensate for that. So, it is necessary to add a leap-second evey once and a while.

Me? I shall turn my good radio to 10.000MHz (the metric standard for time-of-day) and listen for the leap second and use the extra time to take an extra sip of the bubbly.
 
I could have dedicated it to charitable or scientific causes, but I just wasted it replying to you people. Thanks for nothing ya leaches.
 
I'll finally be able to catch up on some sleep. :thumbup:
 
scuffedup said:
i used my second last week
Click to expand...

So far it looks like you used your second first. I thought it was me, but I guess I used my second second and the rest of these people will tie for being the third second to be used, assuming the are all waiting for the last possible minute. That's a lot of seconds to put forth at once.

I'm out of clever ordinal references now. :)

Edit:
Unless someone plans on using their second to drink a fifth.
 
i'll be at work.....dealing with the "perfect storm" of holiday drinkers and wet/icy roads
 
With that extra second, I shall write the next great American novel. It will be a pamplet on famous Jewish sports legends. :D
 
I have one of those 'atomic' clocks which always has the exact , correct time !! Now I find it's been off 1 whole second , I'm devistated. Something has been slowing the earth in it's rotation .
 
The concept of leap years was implemented to deal with the fact that a year is not 365 days long, but in fact 365.24 (if memory serves me right here).

That means that sometimes a leap year is skipped, which happens roughly once per century. It also means that to be perfectly in tune with the actual length of a year, we need to add an extra second from time to time. Twice a year, scientists check if time will be off by more than 0.9 seconds during the upcoming six months and if that turns out to be the case, a leap second is added at the end of either June 30rd or December 31st.
 
Quiet Storm said:
The concept of leap years was implemented to deal with the fact that a year is not 365 days long, but in fact 365.24 (if memory serves me right here).

That means that sometimes a leap year is skipped, which happens roughly once per century. It also means that to be perfectly in tune with the actual length of a year, we need to add an extra second from time to time. Twice a year, scientists check if time will be off by more than 0.9 seconds during the upcoming six months and if that turns out to be the case, a leap second is added at the end of either June 30rd or December 31st.
Click to expand...



Are you in the military ? Ours ?

During the Korean war, I ,in addition to having a platoon,was Commo Chief. I used to listen to the Naval Observatory or some stateside frequency & syncronize my watch with the to- the -second time clock. It started broadcasting time signals [ tics & tocks ] & became increasingly louder until at the prpoer moment emitted a very loud tone. That is when I puched the watch stem in . I had to notify battalion & they would synch with me. Clumsy,yes , but we remained only a few seconds off in a 24 hour period.

Any ideas as to what that source was ?


Uncle [:confused: ] Alan
 
uncle Alan said:
During the Korean war, I ,in addition to having a platoon,was Commo Chief. I used to listen to the Naval Observatory or some stateside frequency & syncronize my watch with the to- the -second time clock. It started broadcasting time signals [ tics & tocks ] & became increasingly louder until at the prpoer moment emitted a very loud tone. That is when I puched the watch stem in . I had to notify battalion & they would synch with me. Clumsy,yes , but we remained only a few seconds off in a 24 hour period.

Any ideas as to what that source was ?
Click to expand...

Korean War era....hmmm... my guess ia precision mechanical chronometers regulated by astronomical observations.

The US Naval Observatory did have a radio station that broadcast time signals.

Today, WWV is run by NIST (formerly NBS). The time they broadcast is atomic time corrected to astronomical time. The correction factor is constantly available and is encoded in the broadcast stream. On saturday night, they will make a dramatic correction, the leap second.

The Naval Observatory now keeps absolute atomic time which is used by the GPS satellites. That time is not corrected, so your GPS receiver will not make the leap second correction. The GPS system uses time to determine position and if they made the leap second, it would screw up position data.

The time of day displayed by your GPS receiver may or may not make the correction. The GPS data stream does include the correction factor (though not considered authoratative) and your receiver may very well apply that correction to the displayed time.
 
I've got an automatic watch.

I lose and gain seconds and even whole minutes every day of my life.:D

What do I care about another second?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top