2016 will go on a little longer.... It is time for a leap second! [View all]

[femmocrat]

The year 2016 will last a little longer. You’ll need to wait a second!

As massive as our planet is, the Earth still “brakes” for ocean waves. Remarkably, this pale blue dot decelerates thanks to the braking action of ocean tides. In fact, our planet decelerates 2 milliseconds per day per century, according to the Naval Observatory. The final effect is that the planet’s rotation slows compared to atomic clocks.

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But since the world slows by about 2 milliseconds a day, a leap second needs to be added about every 500 days. Civil time must be adjusted so that the world’s atomic clocks do not vary from the Earth’s rotational time by more than 0.9 seconds, according to the observatory.

Said Geoff Chester: “By adding a leap second, we’re essentially stopping our atomic clocks to let the Earth catch up.”

More at link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/12/28/on-dec-31-an-extra-leap-second-will-be-added-to-our-universal-clocks-because-waves/?postshare=5281482953246661&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.2539db5cb43e