Why the U.S. Wants to End the Link Between Time and Sun

From the Wall Street Journal...http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB112258962467199210-H9je4Nilal4o52nbYCIbq6Em4,00.html


{snip}Why the U.S. Wants
To End the Link
Between Time and Sun
Astronomers Say Wait a Sec,
Sundials Would Be Passé;
Mean Blow to Greenwich

By KEITH J. WINSTEIN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 29, 2005; Page A1

What time is it when the clock strikes half past 62?

Time to change the way we measure time, according to a U.S. government proposal that businesses favor, astronomers abominate and Britain sees as a threat to its venerable standard, Greenwich Mean Time.

Word of the U.S. proposal, made secretly to a United Nations body, began leaking to scientists earlier this month. The plan would simplify the world's timekeeping by making each day last exactly 24 hours. Right now, that's not always the case.{/snip}


edited to mess with the links somehow...

Time is the essence of our lives!

Unless of course you believe that our lives are imaginary & I would not necessarily disagree with that.

At any rate, with this group of thugs in charge, soon the world will be flat.


:hi:

Honestly I think we should move to metric time, but that's just me.

1 day = 24 hours
1 kilosecond = 2.4 hours
1 hectosecond = .24 hours (14.4 minutes)
1 decasecond = .024 hours (1.44 minutes)
1 second = .0024 hours (0.14 minutes ie 8.4 seconds)
1 decisecond = .00024 hours (0.014 minutes ie .84 seconds)

What's so hard about that?

"For now, U.S. officials still regard their proposal as secret, despite Dr. Gambis's email and the public comments. The head of America's
delegation to the ITU's timing committee, D. Wayne Hanson of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, declined to take calls on
the matter. Through a spokeswoman, he said that the U.S. proposal is a private matter internal to the ITU and not for public discussion."


:eyes:

<whisper> "Ending leap seconds would make the sun start rising later and later by the clock -- a few seconds later each decade. To compensate, the U.S. has proposed adding in a "leap hour" every 500 to 600 years, which also accounts for the fact that the Earth's rotation is expected to slow down even further. That would be no more disruptive than the annual switch to daylight-saving time, said Ronald Beard of the Naval Research Laboratory, who chairs the ITU's special committee on leap seconds and favors their abolishment. "It's not like someone's going to be going to school at four in the afternoon or something," he said."

"Deep down, though, the opposition is more about philosophy than cost. Should the convenience of lazy computer programmers triumph over the rising of the sun? To the government, which worries about safety more than astronomy, the answer is yes. In Mr. Allen's view, absolutely not. "Time has basically always really meant what you measure when you put a stick in the ground and look at its shadow," he said."


dp

When did anyone really care what astronomers think? :cry: