Scientists vote to end leap seconds, redefining how the world keeps time(www.scientificamerican.com)
14 pointsby 0in8 hours ago2 comments
  • vintagedave5 hours ago
    > Instead of using leap seconds, everyone has agreed that they will tolerate more drift between UTC and UT1 than they had in the past. And when things get really bad, we’ll add a leap hour instead. ... a leap hour won’t be needed for more than 1,000 years

    Let me see if I understand this: we are losing accuracy, deliberately, to avoid a negative leap second (something the effects of which we have fears about but don't know), allowing our timekeeping to grow a full hour out of sync, several orders of magnitude worse than we have accepted in the past?

    I'm sure there are good reasons, but in terms of communication, this seems lacking. Can someone help me understand why this is better?

    • reef_sh3 hours ago
      > a leap hour won’t be needed for more than 1,000 years

      That would mean that, even with a long 100 year lifespan, a person would only experience up to 6 minutes of shift. I feel that's a relatively low value.

    • yetihehe5 hours ago
      It's better for the engineers and normal people because they don't have to keep up with the constant drama of leap seconds and can kick the bucket to the engineers 1000 years in future. Maybe the beings at that time (who knows what we become in 1000yrs) will find some trivial way to deal with it, at least they will have 1000 years to think about it.