Driving home from the rheumatologist this afternoon I was listening to
Here and Now out of WBUR in Boston where Robin Young was holding a conversation with
Demetrios Matsakis, chief scientist for Time Services at the U.S. Naval Observatory asking the question
Should We Abolish The Leap Second?.
Apparently I am not alone in my ignorance of such rare increments of time. Robin and Demetrios made a point to tell listeners that most people don't have any clue about leap seconds, and that lack of awareness has the potential for very serious consequences.
In November, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will meet to decide whether to abolish the tiny leap second. Of course, that change in noon wouldn’t be noticed for about a thousand years, but the ongoing conversation about whether or not we really need the leap second has taken on greater urgency, as we rely on increasingly on computers, which depend on synchronized time to work.
Join me below the fold for more.
Before jumping too far ahead in time (!) let's examine why leap seconds are even necessary. We all understand what leap years are, right?
A leap year (or intercalary or bissextile year) is a year containing one additional day (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, a month) in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year.[1] Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have the same number of days in each year, over time, drift with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track. By inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year that is not a leap year is called a common year.
In short, if we don't take advantage of those bisexual years and add a day, our whole frame of reference for seasons and the cycle of civilization will get completely off track. Leap seconds represent a similar problem but on a much longer timeline.
Why do we need a leap second?
“The short answer is it exists because the earth is a lousy clock. The earth speeds up and slows down from one day to the next and over a long time, the earth is slowing down. About 470 million years ago, a day only was 21 hours long.
So, there's an international scientific body called ERS of the
International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service. Basically what they do is focus powerful radio antennas all over the world on quasars super far out into the galaxy and based on the Earth's rotation, take note of the vagaries in our rotation and through those measurements calculate the difference between that rotation and
atomic time.
"And when they see it start to exceed nine-tenths of a second, they insert a leap second.”
Which makes perfect sense, because the sciences as practiced at the level of international astrophysics is about understanding how our universe works and applying that understanding to our our world as best as possible. I mean, who wouldn't want to refine Time and the clocks we use to measure it, right?
Except...
Would this cause problems with computers?
“We have the modern version of train crashes, this would be crashes on the Internet. A lot of programmers don’t even know that leap seconds exist. I venture to say the vast majority of the world doesn’t know that leap seconds exist and they still think we operate on Greenwich Mean Time, although Greenwich Observatory has been closed for decades. Leap seconds are inserted, the computers get a mismatch, and the mismatch can lead to the computer shutting down saying ‘the time is wrong I can’t operate.'”
Which is an "oh shit!" situation if I ever saw one. If the Internet crashes Ceiling Cat will be powerless and Basement Cat will be moving into CC's mansion faster than you can say "I can haz cheezeburger?" Not to mention we won't be able to check our replies to that brilliant comment we left in that latest diary. Broken internet = bad for life.
Which may seem silly but the Internet is more than pooties and trolls (even if sometimes it may not seem like it). Things like GPS systems that rely on international time standards (the atomic clock) can get broken when you start adding seconds.
“The last time we inserted a leap second was June 30, 2012. At that time, the computers that were controlling the reservation system for Qantas Airlines in Australia shut down and passengers were stranded by the thousands at airports until that problem was fixed.”
So while one-one-thousand may seem like a strategy to us when playing hide and seek, and while GPS systems can peek through their fingers and speed up the counting to accommodate the leap second, the
receivers of those systems are dependent on proprietary software written by coders who don't know about leap seconds or don't properly account for their eventual introduction. That's when things go Olly Olly Oxen Free and we all fall down.
How far can we fall? Worse than being stuck at the gate listening to some entitled prick berate the gate agent for the next 12 hours?
if you have an error of 1 second, 1 leap second, it could cause a positional error of 1,000 feet.
Like, missing the runway landing and going into the harbor. Or worse.
Which begs the question "Why have we not pressed hard as an international community to correct this issue and make sure everyone who creates atomic clock dependent technology meets the standards of correction?"
The answer should be no surprise to anyone on this site. Ima give you three guesses.
Nope, not Basement Cat, but super guess! I'll let him know you were asking for him when he wakes up.
Nope, it has nothing to do with any kind of privilege. Well, it kinda does now that I think of it.
YUP! You guessed it! POLITICS.
“The resistance is political and most of it comes from the U.K. All of their public releases report time as GMT, even though the time is coordinated universal time – UTC. Since the two never deviate by as much as 9/10 of a second, it’s a good approximation, so that’s a great source of national pride. If you look at their tabloids, which are the subconscious of a nation, they say that time is up for Britain, that time will drift towards the U.S. That came from their minister of science.”
Sounds like the UK Minister of Science is importing his umbrage directly from America! Dumping Greenwich Mean Time would be like having afternoon tea and hot cross buns with the Queen and making HER clear the dishes.
It just isn't done!
So, what will be come of this? Will the Minister of Science end up selling out Mother England to international demands? Will planes fall from he sky and will night become day?
Eventually, if we don't do something about it says Dr. Matsakis.
"It’s my opinion that no matter what the ITU decides, if they don’t decide to get rid of leap seconds now, they will decide to get rid of it in another 20 to 30 years after the problems get more pronounced.”
And THAT, my friends, ain't no existential threat. We no longer will have the luxury of taking time standing still. We must clearly act against the scourge of leap seconds before everything we hold dear, especially pooties, goes away FOREVER.
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