US to abolish the leap second?

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The US-based International Telecommunications Union wants to scrap the leap second - the addition of a second every 18 months or so to "official" time, to allow for variations in the rotation of the Earth - ostensibly because it's inconvenient to keep resetting the atomic clocks (though they have thus far declined to comment entirely).

It may seem insignificant, but the leap second allows synchronisation of a great deal of equipment - both in high science and more-ordinary household things. In fact, it's responsible for so many things that not one expert in the field who has thus far commented can think of valid any reason at all why the leap second ought to be scrapped.

Read more from the BBC...
 
Well - that bit's not THAT bizarre. After all, we have an odd hour once every 6 months (Daylight Savings Time).
 
Yeah, but that has nothing to do with the Earth's rotation.

Edit: I'm talking about daylight saving.
 
Famine
The US-based International Telecommunications Union wants to scrap the leap second - the addition of a second every 18 months or so to "official" time, to allow for variations in the rotation of the Earth - ostensibly because it's inconvenient to keep resetting the atomic clocks (though they have thus far declined to comment entirely).

It may seem insignificant, but the leap second allows synchronisation of a great deal of equipment - both in high science and more-ordinary household things. In fact, it's responsible for so many things that not one expert in the field who has thus far commented can think of valid any reason at all why the leap second ought to be scrapped.

Read more from the BBC...
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I can think of a reason. It's damn confusing from an engineering point of view.

"Wait, is does that time include the leap second or not?"
"Did this software get updated for the leap second yet?"
"Those predictions were made 3 months ago, they can't have included the leap second could they?"

...and for what? To keep our clocks super-duper close to the earth's rotation? Forget about it. Leap seconds suck.


Edit: While we're at it, let's abolish standard time as well. I'd like to see a year-round daylight saving time standard.
 
danoff
I can think of a reason. It's damn confusing from an engineering point of view.

"Wait, is does that time include the leap second or not?"
"Did this software get updated for the leap second yet?"
"Those predictions were made 3 months ago, they can't have included the leap second could they?"

...and for what? To keep our clocks super-duper close to the earth's rotation? Forget about it. Leap seconds suck.


Edit: While we're at it, let's abolish standard time as well. I'd like to see a year-round daylight saving time standard.
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90% of software is written using frameworks that already have date handling algorithms built in. So there is only a very small group of engineers who have to worry about this, and it only has to be worried about once, and everyone else can reuse it. It's not something your average software developer has to worry about.

On the other hand, if we abolish the leap second, then to remain accurate, the software has to be rebuilt against rewritten date algortihms.
 
With no leap second, every 18 months we're 1 second behind all of our global positioning satellites.

That would prove interesting.
 
skip0110
90% of software is written using frameworks that already have date handling algorithms built in. So there is only a very small group of engineers who have to worry about this, and it only has to be worried about once, and everyone else can reuse it. It's not something your average software developer has to worry about.

On the other hand, if we abolish the leap second, then to remain accurate, the software has to be rebuilt against rewritten date algortihms.
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Leap seconds aren't introduced on a regular time interval, they're introduced on an as-needed basis. So you can't simply account for them ahead of time and move on. Every single leap second is a custom software job and requires that analysis done prior to the modification be tagged as "not-adjusted for leap second" and analysis done after be tagged "adjusted for leap second". It's a major pain in the arse.

It's not something your average software developer has to worry about because most people don't care about time to the second-level. In the space business this is a big deal though. One second at the speed of light is 299,792.458 km. We have to keep track of things like - GPS is not adjusted for leap seconds. It creates a huge mess and I simply don't see the benefit. So what if the Earth rotates at erratic speeds? Do we really need to keep our clocks precise to earth rotation time down to the second level?
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

Historically, leap seconds have been inserted about every 18 months. However, the Earth's rotation rate is unpredictable in the long term, so it is not possible to predict the need for them more than six months in advance.

Negative leap seconds are also possible should the Earth's rotation become slightly faster; in that case, 23:59:58 would be followed by 00:00:00.
 
Under the proposal, leap seconds would be technically replaced by leap hours
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Instead of regularish small adjustments we'll just do one massive one every other century. Great.
 
Famine
Instead of regularish small adjustments we'll just do one massive one every other century. Great.
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Another legacy left to our children and our children's children because of our laziness :lol:
 
danoff
Leap seconds aren't introduced on a regular time interval, they're introduced on an as-needed basis. So you can't simply account for them ahead of time and move on. Every single leap second is a custom software job and requires that analysis done prior to the modification be tagged as "not-adjusted for leap second" and analysis done after be tagged "adjusted for leap second". It's a major pain in the arse.

It's not something your average software developer has to worry about because most people don't care about time to the second-level. In the space business this is a big deal though. One second at the speed of light is 299,792.458 km. We have to keep track of things like - GPS is not adjusted for leap seconds. It creates a huge mess and I simply don't see the benefit. So what if the Earth rotates at erratic speeds? Do we really need to keep our clocks precise to earth rotation time down to the second level?
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Ahh, I see.

Wouldn't this introduce major muck-ups into projects like the "millenium clock"? http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/ Becuase the leap-second would chaneg the length of the year, creating a noticable skew after several hundered years, yes? Or do they cancel in the long run?
 
If it isn't broken, don't fix it. This proposition just sounds like it would create more problems than it would solve.
 
LoudMusic
I think we should just destroy all the clocks.
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I don't think we should scrap clocks just yet. How will I know when to watch the Flyers beat the Sens?


They should have made the time match the earth's rotation to start with. Then we wouldn't be worrying about leap seconds and kids wouldn't be born on February 29th, that has to suck only having a birthday every four years.
 
[QUOTE='85fierogt]I don't think we should scrap clocks just yet. How will I know when to watch the Flyers beat the Sens?[/QUOTE] :lol:
 
Famine
Instead of regularish small adjustments we'll just do one massive one every other century
Click to expand...
Hopefully they'll do the first one during an episode of "Will and Grace"... :sly:

I don't quite get the argument for abolishing the leap second... if a scientific experiment requires going by absolute time, then surely they can do it, and not bother about what time is reads elsewhere...? For all the hassle it would cause with systems that have been designed to incorporate the leap second, I don't think abolishing it is a worthwhile idea...
 
[QUOTE='85fierogt]They should have made the time match the earth's rotation to start with.[/QUOTE]

You can't.

This is one of the reasons the ITU is complaining - the rotation of the Earth is variable, so the ERS has to put leap seconds in to account for this. Atomic clocks are based on atomic oscillations which are NOT variable, but every time a leap second is added/subtracted they have to be reset.

If we went on purely atomic time, we'd eventually end up with sunrise at 7pm and March in August.
 
Ev0
If it isn't broken, don't fix it. This proposition just sounds like it would create more problems than it would solve.
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It IS broken and needs to be fixed.

If we went on purely atomic time, we'd eventually end up with sunrise at 7pm and March in August.
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At the rate of one second per year it would take us 43,200 years to shift 12 hours. Even a leap hour - which wouldn't bother too many people wouldn't happen until the year 5605. Hell putting it off to a leap minute would mean we wouldn't need to think about this until 2065.

I need to see a reason to keep our time within 1 second of the earth's rotation.


They should have made the time match the earth's rotation to start with. Then we wouldn't be worrying about leap seconds and kids wouldn't be born on February 29th, that has to suck only having a birthday every four years.
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They would have if the earth was a good clock. But the earth doesn't rotate at a constant speed so it doesn't make for a good clock.

Not only does the earth not rotate at a constant speed, it isn't even predictable to the long term given our current understanding.
 
Just got me thinking... I'd like to know - if anyone can tell me - whether you get paid more or less for working over the 1am-2am period when clocks go back/forward an hour.
 
Famine
Just got me thinking... I'd like to know - if anyone can tell me - whether you get paid more or less for working over the 1am-2am period when clocks go back/forward an hour.
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It happened to me a few times when I was working in a hotel at night shift. And I don't remember getting payed more or less when it happened. :p
 
That blows.

Surely if you work from, say, 10pm to 3am and the clocks go back an hour in the middle, you should get 6 hours' pay. Or, if you work from 10pm to 2am you should be able to clock off at 2am (when the clocks go back to 1am) and not have to work that extra hour.
 
Famine

If we went on purely atomic time, we'd eventually end up with sunrise at 7pm and March in August.
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Great - i've always wanted a summertime birthday.
 

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