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Speaking of New Year's Eve, it turns out that it is going to be one second longer than usual this year. The scientists in charge of maintaining world time have to insert a "leap second" for the first time in seven years, in order to keep atomic time sync'd up with the Earth's rotational time (um, what?) The point is that your New Year's Party can be extended by exactly 1000 milliseconds this year, which is perfect for doing one last shot of vodka before ringing in 2006:
On the U.S. East Coast, the extra second occurs just before 7 p.m. on New Year's Eve. Atomic clocks at that moment will read 23:59:60 before rolling over to all zeros.
As none of the clocks in our apartment are less than ten minutes off, this change will not be affecting us-- but there are plenty of time-nerds out there throwing "leap-second" themed NYE parties-- send us pictures if you get invited to one! [Related: you can catch all the excitement of the leap second on the US Government's official time site.]
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there are plenty of time-nerds out there throwing "leap-second" themed NYE parties-- send us pictures if you get invited to one!
1. Sure about that?
2. On NYE, we'd rather skip the "leap-second" parties in favor of the "get drunk and have random-stranger sex in the coat room" parties. Or maybe that's just me.
Instead of saying "Um, what?", would it kill you to open a browser or pick up a phone, gather information, and actually understand and explain what's going on?
the "um, what?" wasn't to signify that i don't understand the explanation-- rather, that it's a complicated explanation that most people won't care about. in this case, it's exactly what i wrote-- the second is required to keep the atomic clocks sync'd up with the rotation of the earth (so noon occurs at 12pm, and not at 12:00:01). without the leap second, the clocks (which are more accurate time keepers than the earth's rotation), would slowly drift out of phase with the time as we witness it here on earth. this actually used to happen on a larger basis with the calendar-- during ancient times (before the current calendar with leap-years was invented) the seasons drifted so much that harvest was occuring in december or january. but like i said, most people don't care about that.
The second used to be defined in terms of the rotation of the earth. But atomic clocks are more accurate than the earth's roataion. When the second was redefined, it became necessary to account for the difference between the earth's rotation and the time measured by the atomic clocks. Astronomers care that the clock is periodically resynced. Most people don't care and a proposel has been made to do away with the leap seconds.
Was that too complicated?
People besides astronomers care about the leap seconds. By the way, it's not really a surprise. Anyone who cares about accurate time already knew it was coming. There's a mailing list or two for such things.
Jake's writeup was perfectly sufficient. This is not a science website, just a city site that reports on neat things. If you are interested in finding out more about leap seconds, you are perfectly capable of opening a browser and gathering info on your own. Jake and the other Gothamist writers do not work for you.