A Giant Leap for the Leap Second. Is Humankind Ready?
Tonight is the night to Fall Back 🕰️🍂 as we all get an extra hour of sleep. But did you know about Leap Second?
Based on two different ways we measure time (exactly): atomic and astronomical. Occasionally the two clocks become out of sync (because time is relative?) and we need to insert a leap second. Really interesting article from the New York Times:
For 50 years, the international community has carefully and precariously balanced two different ways of keeping time. One method, based on Earth’s rotation, is as old as human timekeeping itself, an ancient and common-sense reliance on the position of the sun and stars. The other, more precise method coaxes a steady, reliable frequency from the changing state of cesium atoms and provides essential regularity for the digital devices that dominate our lives.
The trouble is that the times on these clocks diverge. The astronomical time, called Universal Time, or UT1, has tended to fall a few clicks behind the atomic one, called International Atomic Time, or TAI. So every few years since 1972, the two times have been synced by the insertion of leap seconds — pausing the atomic clocks briefly to let the astronomic one catch up. This creates UTC, Universal Coordinated Time.
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