>The Leap second is back - evidently the current administration's proposal to eliminate them has not been adopted.<
Excellent news indeed for diallists and lovers of solar time but isn't it rather sad that the link that reported this good news gets its facts wrong - like so many others you can see relating to the leap second? It makes the mistake of attrbuting the need for the leap second to the slowing down of the earth. It is related to it of course but the slowing of the earth is actually only circa 1.5mS per century and since atomic time was defined to equate with solar time at 1900, now - roughly 100+ years later, we have a discrepancy of 1.5mS between the two time scales. It is to adjust for this that we need the leap second . Indeed it is interesting to note that even if miraculously the earth's rotation did not slow down from now on we would still need leap seconds every few years to keep our closks in synchronism with solar time.. Ah well, pedantry is a good thing sometimes.... Patrick --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
