Friday, August 17, 2012

atomic clocks that serve as benchmarks for the global timestamp is adjusted to maintain the pace of rotation of the Earth

The world is about to get a long well deserved weekend, but no major projects since the last second longer. The "leap second" is supposedly added to atomic clocks around the world that are rarely subject to an adjustment to keep pace with the slower rotation of the Earth.

To achieve adjustment, atomic clocks on Saturday night read 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds before midnight Greenwich Mean Time.

super-accurate atomic clocks are the definitive benchmark by which the world sets its watches. However, its precise regularity - which is much more constant than the sliding motion of the Earth around the Sun that marks our days and nights - brings its own problems

If no adjustment was made, the clocks are moved forward and after many years the sun at noon. The second has a role similar to that of each leap year extra day keeps the calendar in tune with the seasons. The Earth's rotation and reference systems (IERS), based in Paris, is responsible for keeping track of the time difference between atomic and planetary and issuing edicts international adding leap seconds.

"We want the two times together and you can not adjust the rotation of the Earth," says Daniel Gambis, director of the center of IERS Earth Orientation, told Reuters.

Gambis said rotation of the Earth and its motion around the sun was far from constant.

In recent years, a leap second is added every few years, a little more frequent than in the 1970s, despite the long-term slowdown in the Earth's rotation caused by tides, earthquakes land and a host of other natural phenomena.


there have been calls to abandon leap seconds, but a meeting of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN agency responsible for international communication, failed to reach a consensus in January.



"They decided to make no decision," said Gambis, adding that another attempt was made in 2015.

Opponents of the leap second want a simpler system which avoids the cost and the margin of error by making manual changes of thousands of computer networks. Proponents argue that it should remain to maintain the accuracy of the systems in areas such as navigation.
British Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) said the second jump must be maintained until there is a wider debate about the change.


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