Three! Two! One! One Again!
I think it’s neat that there are still some people out there to whom this added second will matter. I suspect that most folks celebrating New Year’s Eve will be too hammered to care whether the countdown is right or not. My own experience is that countdowns at parties have a plus/minus of 15 seconds on either side of the real time, whether they’ve synchronized to Dick Clark (who may well have an atomic clock installed in his increasingly-bionic body already!) or not.
Luckily, due to the time difference, we in the US won’t have to worry about that extra second during countdown time. It’ll already be figured in. So feel free to do whatever you normally do without worrying that the New Year’s Eve Countdown Police won’t bash down your door if you hit midnight a little bit early.
It is nice, though, to see scientists care about the details. In all the hoopla about global warming, we’ve seen quite a few scientists willing to ignore the details in order to score political points. But real science does live out there. It just can’t survive contact with Al Gore.
No related posts.
Category: Hey, Mr. Science Guy!
It's about time, if you'll pardon the pun–we had 6 leap seconds in the 80's, and 7 in the 90's, but this will only be the 2nd one since then.
Want a real science project? Figure out why the Earth's rotation sped up in 2000. (I'm pretty sure it's not because somebody drilled down to the core and detonated nuclear devices.) An increase in Antarctic ice would do it, or some pretty substantial dams built far from the equator…
@Mr. Science Guy –
It is a copout if I just blame global warming?
BTW, I'm one of those people to whom the added second will matter. A little. The computers will handle the actual time keeping, but they have to be programmed to know that December 31st is one second longer this year.
Feel free to blame global warming, if you want. Or ghosts, or aliens, or The Core, or continental drift; you have the right to hold any opinion you choose. Just be clear that opinions aren't science.
@Mr. Science Guy –
Oh, I know. I really don't have a good theory and I'm not sure where to even start looking for the answer. I consider it another way the world around me seems to work just fine even though it surely looks odd.