That was pun-tastic! Why? Because I am not writing to talk about leap years, that news is older than a caveman’s knock-knock joke. I’m talking about Leap Seconds folks.
I know what you are saying, “Jon this is insane. No such thing.” But I am here to say: You bet your sweet sunshine there is! Why? Well it turns out we have figured out a way to keep time that is so reliable that Earth (you know… the planet) falls out of sync with it.
Yep. Atomic clocks are apparently so good at what they do that they need to be adjusted because the stupid lazy Earth can’t stay consistent. Sometimes it rotates a tinny-tiny-bit faster, sometime a smidge slower. Even more crazy, there are people that need UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) to be within 0.9 seconds of UT1 (astronomical time scale).
What does that actually mean? It means that every year or so someone, somewhere announces that UTC will be adjusted by 1 second. It’s happened 23 times since 1972, where were you for the last leap second (Dec 31st 2005)? And when will the Earth strike again and steal a precious second from our UTC?
I say that if the Earth can’t rotate on schedule that we sign a petition for a vote of no confidence.
sidenote: the Head of the Earth Orientation Center of the IERS has proposed an end of leap seconds (obviously a communist— get ‘em boys)
