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![]() Just Above Sunset
September 25, 2005 - The Other Great Debate (about time itself)
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At the end of July in these
pages, in Counting the Seconds, or Not, there was a discussion of a controversy - the real problem with adding "leap seconds" in determining what was the actual,
precise time at any place on the planet. There seem to be three
choices: Hold on a second! Britain's
Royal Astronomical Society on Wednesday called for a public debate on the proposed abolition of leap seconds, a tiny end-of-year
adjustment to keep clocks in synch with the earth's rotation. So, should the debate be
opened up? That might be fun, and a break from all the talk of war and politics
and natural disasters, and oil running out and economic woes and global warming and coming pandemics. On the one side you have the purists, the business folks and the United States government arguing for absolute
precision, for good reason, but ignoring the natural world with its imperfections. On
the other side you have the realists, the folks who study the tides and stars, and this imperfect earth, and these people
need a timekeeping system that matches actual, observable phenomena. Wait a second (no pun intended). That's the same debate as on all the other matters. |
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This issue updated and published on...
Paris readers add nine hours....
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