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> It's really not a big deal. Unless, of course, you are a satellite.
by withinboredom 2y ago
> It's really not a big deal.
Unless, of course, you are a satellite.
- arp242 2y agoI don't know what you're referring to, but as far as I know satellites can work perfectly fine without a leap second. I'm not aware of any practical advantage of leap seconds anywhere. The only difficulty in abolishing the leap second is that some systems have it incorporated in their protocol, but that's a protocol issue and not an intrinsic time drift issue.
- withinboredom 2y agoTime is attached to the orbit of the earth (very precisely) so when time goes out of sync of the earth, it won't be a good day for anyone.
- arp242 2y agoMost satellite systems don't use leap seconds; you don't need leap seconds to have satellites. And leap seconds don't really "sync time with the earth"; that's not how any of this works. Whether it's now 13:04:00 or 13:04:27 is somewhat arbitrary and all leap seconds do is maintain a certain arbitrary definition.
- Dylan16807 2y agoOrbiting around earth is going to be based on sidereal time, which drifts 4 minutes per day. Converting into normal units has no reason to care about leap seconds when it can use the actual offset and be a few orders of magnitude more precise.