just learned today that at the end of this year its gonna be one second longer yeah i'm not that shocked either

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

thats just messed up wish i never have learned that usless information now haha

 

didnt u learn that in ur physics class? even the world's most perfect gyrosphere (spell check) isnt all that perfect

 

never took physics, and i suck at math and so so in sci.

 

Looks like i get to do a little more for new years eve then..

Cya

 

Five! Four! Three! Two! ONE! aah,,, ONE! Happy New Year!

The leap second is inserted now and then because the earth does not turn at constant speed. The time standard is now kept by a network of cesium beam clocks that are much more accurate than the spin of the planet.

Unfortunately, the "Official rotational Year" differs a tiny bit from the true average year, so every few years the difference between clock time and rotational time exceeds 0.9s and a leap second is added to the clock time to realign it with the rotational time.

If you have a GPS, you may have noticed that it doesn't match the standard time. This is because GPS time is not adjusted and currently differs from rotational time by about 15 seconds.

Here is more info from the U.S. Naval Observatory

 

so where does the leap day leap year what ever come into play???

 

Here is what I propose. Rather than count an atomic second as the length of time an atom of cesium 133 to tick through 9,192,631,770 cycles, I propose that we make it 9,192,631,771 cycles. Clearly, the cesium is pooping up the program.

 

You're getting into a very complex and controversial field there, with political and cultural complications galore! If you want to venture further here's a book to read:

Splitting the Second

 

hey now no politics in my thread...

imma tryin too keep this clean here

all this politic talk goes right over my head

 

...but you devoted an entire post to state you don't want political talk...however you, yourself just contributed to the political aspect of leap seconds with your post of political strike within this particular thread. So, point being although you said you want to keep it "clean", you contributed to the very cause.