World's Timekeepers Will Decide The Fate Of The Leap Second

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World's Timekeepers Will Decide The Fate Of The Leap Second
January 17, 2012
by Eyder Peralta

The International Telecommunication Union's Radiocommunication Assembly, otherwise known as the international authority that keeps close tabs on time, will debate a philosophical question this week: They will decide whether to eliminate the leap second and in doing so break its tie to astronomical time.

A leap second is a lot like a leap year, reports the Financial Times, except that it's unpredictable. Since it was introduced in 1972, the ITU has added 24 leap seconds to recalibrate the world's atomic clocks to keep time with Earth's imprecise orbit.

The AP reports the leap second is causing a showdown at the international convention. The U.S. and France are advocating for getting rid of the leap second and countries like England, Canada and China are arguing in favor of the leap second saying this is more than a technical question.

Here's Times explaining the U.K.'s stance:

"Defenders of the status quo, such as Peter Whibberley of the National Physical Laboratory who will represent the UK at the ITU meeting, respond that there have been no proven examples of trouble after 24 leap second introductions over 40 years.

"But their main point, says Mr Whibberley, is 'not technical but more of a social or civil question. Do we want to keep the traditional link with astronomical time? I think we do'."

Whibberley said that the change would not be noticed at first, but after a century, time and Earth time would be "several minutes apart."

The AP reports on the other view:

"'This would be an important decision because the problem of introducing the leap second would disappear and we would have a more steady time than we have today,' Vincent Meens, an official at the International Telecommunication Union who has chaired technical talks on the issue, said Tuesday.

"Operators of cell phone networks, financial markets and air traffic control systems could then rely on the near-absolute precision offered by atomic clocks without having to worry about stopping their systems for the length of a heartbeat every year or two.

"'Most of the people who operate time services favor discontinuing leap seconds,' said Judah Levine, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado. 'The main problem is that the leap second is usually implemented by stopping the clock for one second. However, the world doesn't stop,' he said."

The decision will be made at the ITU's World Radiocommunication Conference, which runs from Jan. 23 through Feb. 17.

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@BumbleBeeBoogie,

Simon Says
by Scott Simon
Wait A Second, And What Else To Do With It
January 21, 2012

Let me take a second here.

Not very long, was it?

But a second tied up delegates to the UN's International Telecommunication Union, who postponed a decision this week on whether to abolish the extra second that's added to clocks every few years to compensate for the earth's natural doddering.

The earth slows down slightly as we spin through space. No one falls off, but earthquakes and tides routinely slow the earth by a fraction of a fraction of a second, which makes clocks minutely wrong. If not corrected, it could make a minute of difference a century.

So every few years, official clocks around the world repeat a second. The last "leap second," as it's called, was added at the end of 2008.

Ah, I remember it well.

The UN agency has been talking about abolishing the leap second for eight years. If you ever wonder why the UN can seem so slow to act in a crisis, consider the time they've had just deciding what to do about a second. But the implications are astronomical.

For centuries time was figured by the rotation of the earth. But atomic clocks keep time by the movement of electrons in atoms.

The U.S., France and Japan consider the leap second to be a nuisance, like having to reset the clocks on the alarm and microwave twice a year, especially when power grids and global positioning systems rely on millisecond timing.

Physicist Włodzimierz Lewandowski asked the panel, "Does it make sense to ... use an imperfect clock based on a wobbly planet?"

Don't be offended, Earthlings.

But China, Canada, Britain and some astronomers think that if we move solely to atomic time, we may lose sight of the ways our days are linked to the sun and stars. We might lose sight of our place in the universe.

"The United Kingdom is strongly opposed to coming up with a new conception of time, without good reason," said British physicist Peter Whibberley.

The UN won't take up the issue for another three years, so another leap second is scheduled for June 30.

How will you use your extra second?

It's not enough time to learn Latin, climb Kilimanjaro or read Ulysses. But maybe just enough to remind us that our time goes by in the blink of an eye: We should cherish every fleeting second.

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World's Timekeepers Will Decide The Fate Of The Leap Second

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