Re: Truly Offensive Bad Astronomy

oriel36 wrote:

I enjoy taking pretensious freaks apart so lets see how you stand up .

From your ill-informed website -

"The Second is now defined, in SI, by the physics of atoms, and no
longer by the rotation of the Earth.
For the UTC time scale, the addition or subtraction of Leap Seconds
accommodates the discrepancy in rate, which in 2001 was about 1 ms per
day or 0.01 ppm. The UTC day thereby tracks the averaged rotation of
the Earth with respect to the Earth-Sun line.

A constant rate of Leap Seconds would accommodate a constant averaged
Earth rotation time differing from the nominal 86400 SI seconds.
Variations in the Leap Second rate accommodate changes in the Earth's
averaged rotation rate.

Long-term, the Earth's mean rotation slows by about 7 ms / year /
year, largely because of the drag of sea-tides.

Leap Seconds occur simultaneously, world-wide, at UTC midnight.

Leap Seconds were introduced in principle at 1972.0 UTC; the first one
was 1972-06-30 23:59:60 UTC"

http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/leapsecs.htm


The only 'leaps seconds' that are acceptable in respect to the axial
cycle are from the dignified,do you hear this,the dignified Equation
of Time system which resets the 24 hour clock cycle to natural
noon.

Unfortunately, the SI seconds we use in our electronic devices are the
wrong length even for the undignified average 24 hour day, and so we
need "leap seconds" to make up the error with that.

And his web site was very accurately informed about those leap seconds
that are in actual current use. Leaping back and forth every year to
stay with the sundial is not worth the bother, but avoiding a long-
term cumulative error because our second is the wrong size is needed.

John Savard

.

Relevant Pages

  • Royal Astronomical Society statement on the proposed abolition of leap seconds (Forwarded)
    ... Royal Astronomical Society Press Notice ... RAS STATEMENT ON THE PROPOSED ABOLITION OF LEAP SECONDS ... based on the rotation of the Earth. ... This is called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). ...
    (sci.space.news)
  • Leap second checking
    ... been a few reports of some unix systems crashing because of the leap second. ... UTC TIME STEP ... A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2008. ... Earth Orientation Center of IERS ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: questions about UTC time, definitions, leap seconds, and
    ... >> 9,192,632,060 cycles instead of 9,192,631,770 cycles of this cesium ... "cesium time") in 1967 before they were dealing with the leap seconds. ... rotation of the Earth *has* to be slowing down, ...
    (sci.physics.research)
  • Royal Astronomical Society statement on the proposed abolition of leap seconds (Forwarded)
    ... the International Telecommunications Union will be discussing a proposal to abolish leap seconds. ... The Royal Astronomical Society strongly recommends that this proposal should be shelved, and that, before any changes are implemented, there should be a broader, public debate on the future use of these small adjustments to our annual ... Leap seconds are small adjustments to UTC, which keep ordinary clock time synchronised with the rotation of Earth and thus with the location of the Sun in the sky. ...
    (sci.astro)
  • Re: Twins paradox debunked and broken down
    ... Atomic clocks are more accurate than the Earth itself is as a clock. ... Remember it happens at midnight UTC so you can do this and still go to ... SERVICE INTERNATIONAL DE LA ROTATION TERRESTRE ET DES SYSTEMES DE REFERENCE ... OBSERVATOIRE DE PARIS ...
    (sci.physics)