Time war between astronomical and atomic

The earth's movements is slowing down by two thousandths of a second each day, which means astronomical time is out of sync with atomic time.

To reconcile this difference we have leap seconds, extra seconds which we add to time measurements every few years.

If we abandon leap seconds, and rely only on atomic clocks, time measurements will start to deviate from the position of the sun in the sky.

In thousands of years, clocks might say its midday in the middle of the night, but that is quite a long time away.

Horologists, experts on time, are debating the effects of the extra few seconds that have been added each year.




Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips reports from London.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Jazeera;
• Europenews;
• time;
• Barnaby
• Phillips;
• Earth

[amevilee]

Not the kind of time war I was hoping for.

[quaxk]

hard to implement a leap second? gimme a break! this is just system programmers laziness

[robsan81]

I like astronomical time and i like atomic time, but which is better?? There's only one way to find out....Fight!!!!

[AntDX316]

if there no adjustment, if the world doesnt end in 2012, then at 2150 what is 2pm would look like 12am

[teawead]

Our monkey brain cannot go without looking at the sun. So I say fuck you atomic time.

[PrettyboyStrollboy]

This may explain why time travel is still impossible. Our time & Earth's time should be in line first so we can get into time's so called path.

[ElBarto3131]

To be honest, I'd function much better with a 25 hour day.

[yourtreat2]

OBVIOUSLY, ANY CHANGE IN TIME IN THE MIDDLE-EAST WOULD BE HIGHLY UNDESIRABLE.

PERHAPS, SETTING THE CLOCKS BACKWARD 2 THOUSAND YEARS WOULD BE MORE "SCIENTIFIC", AND FAR MORE SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE, AS WELL..

[Lastindependentthink]

Maybe what we could do in the future is get nasa to install giant rocket engines that run on hydrogen around the equator. and fire in a westerly direction and slowly increase the earths rotation speed to exactly 24 hours. it would take a lot of force. but who knows??

[SuperZiggy12]

Pole shift inc?