I have been using a surplus Thunderbolt for about six months, and it seemed to be working fine. In January 2012, a message came up in yellow, (LEAP PENDING!), I don't know what this means, but since it didn't go away on Feb 28, must not be leap year related.
Hi Ed, Right, in this case the "LEAP" refers to a leap second, not a leap year. When the next leap second occurs this summer, the yellow warning will go away. As you know, leap years are used to keep "days" and "years" in sync, where a day is earth rotation (about its axis) and a year is earth revolution (around the sun). Last one was: Feb 29, 2012. Similarly, leap seconds are used to keep "seconds" and "days" in sync, where a second is now defined by atomic standards and a day is earth rotation. Next one is: 19:59:60 EDT, Jun 30, 2012. Keeping clocks in sync is a significant part of the timekeeping world. For example, with quartz and GPS it's easy to "discipline" quartz in order to steer it closer to GPS. This is done by making slight changes in quartz EFC voltage to change the frequency, to close the differential time error. But when it comes to orbits and planets, objects too large for us to change their rate, objects which have no EFC input, we have to resort to making artificial, bookkeeping, virtual steps in time instead of gradual changes in physical rate. /tvb _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
