4 ms·
Lack of understanding of the relation between 24 hours and rotational period of Earth. Earth does not take anywhere close to 24 hours to complete a rotation, r
by twawaaay 4y ago
Lack of understanding of the relation between 24 hours and rotational period of Earth.
Earth does not take anywhere close to 24 hours to complete a rotation, regardless of how you measure it.
Earth rotates in 23h 56m 4s with relation to distant stars.
Earth rotates in 24h +- 30s with relation to Sun. The length of day depends on how far Earth is from the Sun, the speed at which Earth rotates the Sun changes throughout the orbit. And so every day the Sun makes a different distance around Earth (as seen from Earth), making the day a little bit longer or shorter.
- kingkawn 4y ago23h56m4s doesn’t come in at “anywhere close?”
- twawaaay 4y agoThey are talking about 1ms diff from 24h as being a lot. 4 minutes is hundreds of thousands larger difference.
- dariusj18 4y agoNo, that's super far off astronomically speaking.
- kingkawn 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- twawaaay 4y agoScience is based on measurements and metrology is essentially pedantry, so... a compliment? (And I am aware this is bad logic.)
- kingkawn 4y agoScience is not based on hyperbolic nitpicking critiques tho
- eyelidlessness 4y agoImagine the complexities of systems dealing with both perspectives of time, and the drift that can occur over… er… time. Particularly imagine the hypothetical complexities of a system where there’s any N > 1 civil time system. Space colonization is probably what springs to mind, but it wasn’t long ago (this past week if I’m not mistaken) that a civil time system without leap seconds was proposed for Earth and made it to the HN front page. It’s easy for things to go wrong when basic facts about time don’t line up. Not every set of things and wrong-going will rise to the level of what people imagined about Y2K, but I can personally attest to months of hell untangling and correcting records related to minute differences (sorry, accidental pun but I’m leaving it in) in how two very widely used RDBMSes keep time.