2008 will be 1 second longer

by Primož on Dec.29, 2008, under Experience

That’s right, the New Year will come one second later this year because the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) needs to be adjusted. This is nothing new actually, such adjustments, or “leap seconds” were added quite frequently in the past, to reduce the difference between the mean solar time and the TAI (International Atomic Time) and are usually applied on the 31st of December or on 30th June.

But why are such adjustments needed? The reason behind this is in the way we measure time. From 1967, the second is defined as the oscillation of an atom of Celsium-133, which can be measured by an atomic clock. This is by far the most reliable and most accurate definition, and allows a precise measurement of time. The Earth’s rotation however, is not so precise and is constantly affected by tidal friction, glacial rebound and other unpredictable events. Because of this, the time needs to be corrected to stay synchronised with the actual mean solar time.

5 Comments for this entry

Jade
December 29th, 2008 on 18:04
That’s some interesting New year trivia. It makes you think about how important the second is. Its not just a common daily occurrence of little worth.

What would life be like without the second?
Primož
January 1st, 2009 on 22:05
This second is, as it seems, more of a trouble maker for electronic devices. People all over the world are complaining about their Microsoft Zunes not working anymore. Some other devices also decided, that dey do not approve of this change of the timing schedule, but nothing as massive as the Zunes.
Jade
January 2nd, 2009 on 04:52
It seems the second comes in many faces- not all of them pretty.

But there are things out there that could never function without the second- an example is sports. If we only had say minutes- timing would not be as accurate and winners would be much harder to determine.

Or with horse racing. Thoroughbreds are timed by seconds. God thoroughbreds get around the track in lace then a minute, so their distance for time must be measured in seconds.

(The zune situation is unfortunate. Now I’m glad I got an ipod instead of a zune last year.)
Primož
January 2nd, 2009 on 18:33
Yeah, that’s true. Seconds are very important. Miliseconds are also a vital part of the time, not only in electronic devices, which are able to measure them, but also for humans, in sports for example as you already said, even seconds are not accurate enough to measure the results.
ish
January 3rd, 2009 on 16:10
Happy Healthy New Year to you and your family!!!