2009 to be delayed

[DYNAMICS]

It takes only a second for me to shoot you in the face, is that meaningful?


EDIT: DAMN YOU CUBSFAN, YOU STOLE MY ZINGER POSITION AND MADE A LOUSY ZINGER. PLEASE DO NOT WASTE PERFECTLY GOOD ZINGER POSITIONS ON LOUSY ZINGERS.

Someone got a Coal for Christmas!

 

[sysyphus]

Gun violence does not a zinger make. You should have threatened to fart in his face Perf.

 

[Zelig]

Does that make next year one second shorter?

No, it's a bonus, like leap days.

I blame Canada.

Hey, I used to live by that bay! My town was hydro-powered, thanks to the tides.

 

[Perfection]

Someone got a Coal for Christmas!

There was a huge ass diamond in the middle of it, so it worked out good.

Gun violence does not a zinger make. You should have threatened to fart in his face Perf.

My farts last longer then a second!

 

[History_Buff]

Does that make next year one second shorter?

Nah, the Earth's rotation is just slowing down ever so gradually. This year isn't actually longer than last year than anything close to a second, but the IERS periodically adds these tricky little leap seconds to make sure UTC continues to approximate mean solar time (the time you and I perceive) along 0 degrees longitude.

In actuality, next year will be less than a second longer than this year I think. But it's tough to predict, because while tidal breaking continues to slow the Earth down, there are events capable of speeding up the rotational period of the Earth, which happened in 2000. It's a mad, mad, mad world.

It's completely pointless, it's not like anyone is going to adjust their clocks by one second.

Oh, people will. But I agree, TAI or GPS time for everyone! Oh the stability!

 

[Mr. Dictator]

so 60 days into the year, most clocks will be wrong by one minute?

 

[Cutlass]

so 60 days into the year, most clocks will be wrong by one minute?

No. It's not adding a second a day. It's adding a second every several years.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

No. It's not adding a second a day. It's adding a second every several years.

oh, and im not even drinking tonight

 

[Sharwood]

We should just start using Adjusted Planck Units and end this crap.

 

[History_Buff]

We should just start using Adjusted Planck Units and end this crap.

It wouldn't really help. The problem is that with any cyclical time system, it will eventually fall out of sync with perceptible reality (solar noon being the big one). If you wanted a time system that never ever changed, we could just use TAI, but it requires some tricky math to reduce it to a useful time.

 

[GenMarshall]

I blame Obama. I know he's not President of the USA yet but it's time we got a little practice in.

I blame George W. Bush. He's the biggest fail in the world.

 

[Sharwood]

It wouldn't really help. The problem is that with any cyclical time system, it will eventually fall out of sync with perceptible reality (solar noon being the big one). If you wanted a time system that never ever changed, we could just use TAI, but it requires some tricky math to reduce it to a useful time.

Adjusted Planck would be used in a manner that didn't give a damn about relativity or other factors, from what I understand. So it wouldn't matter if the date on a colony somewhere in the Sol system was different to the time on Earth.

 

[History_Buff]

Adjusted Planck would be used in a manner that didn't give a damn about relativity or other factors, from what I understand. So it wouldn't matter if the date on a colony somewhere in the Sol system was different to the time on Earth.

I'm still not exactly sure what that means, but it seems like it would be identical to using TAI.

But this has nothing to do with relativity, it's just that the Earth is rotating slower. Where once it took 86,400 SI seconds for the Earth to spin around it's axis (which is also moving), it then took 86,400.06, then 86,400.12, etc. Sooner or later this would mean that at the highest ascension of the sun wouldn't occur at noon, which would just be weird. Thus, leap seconds.

 

[Sharwood]

I'm still not exactly sure what that means, but it seems like it would be identical to using TAI.

But this has nothing to do with relativity, it's just that the Earth is rotating slower. Where once it took 86,400 SI seconds for the Earth to spin around it's axis (which is also moving), it then took 86,400.06, then 86,400.12, etc. Sooner or later this would mean that at the highest ascension of the sun wouldn't occur at noon, which would just be weird. Thus, leap seconds.

What is TAI? Then I might be able to tell you. I know this has nothing to do with relativity, that's just the big thing in the article I read on APU a long time ago, why it's better for space exploration, so that's what I mentioned as my example. But APU would mark the year as the same length of time regardless of the Earth's spin.

 

[uppi]

Does that make next year one second shorter?

No, 2009 will be 86401 or 86399 seconds shorter than 2008, depending on your timezone.