4 ms·
>Over decades, the difference between Earth-based time and atomic clock time would amount to a few minutes, but over 500 years, they would be out by an hour. Ov
by Lewton 15y ago
>Over decades, the difference between Earth-based time and atomic clock time would amount to a few minutes, but over 500 years, they would be out by an hour. Over millennia, the discrepancy would grow even more.
Is this really true?
Based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second
It seems like there's only been 25 leap seconds in 40 years. That's around a minute every century..
- chalst 15y agoLeap seconds are expected to become more frequent, and the last decade has had unusually few leap seconds.
- Lewton 15y agoDoes that mean we expect there to be more than a couple of leap seconds every year? (Based on the "more than an hour over 500 years" statement)
- chalst 15y agoErr, yes, that does sound an order of magnitude out, now I come to think of it. The original proposal allows updates four times a year, though only the July and December updates have been used.
- maggit 15y agoFour times a year, with up to two seconds added each time should put an upper bound for adjustments accumulated over 500 years to: 500 years * 4 updates/year * 2 seconds/update = 4000 seconds = 66 2/3 minutes So an hour in 500 years seems to require adjusting almost as much as we can, which isn't realistic.