[ntp:questions] Google and leap seconds

Richard B. Gilbert rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Thu Sep 22 00:01:41 UTC 2011


On 9/21/2011 4:55 PM, John Hasler wrote:
> Richard B. Gilbert writes:
>> Too bad that the movements of of the planets, moons, etc. are not
>> better behaved.  Lacking the powers of the divine we must work around
>> the fact that the earth does not rotate exactly once in each
>> twenty-four hours, and the fact that its revolution around the Sun is
>> similarly messy, taking 365 days, six hours, and a few odd minutes and
>> seconds which we account for (mostly) by declaring a "leap year" every
>> four years.
>
> A purely local problem which should be handled by localization tables,
> not by jiggering the timestream.  Are you going to insert leap hours on
> Mars?.
>
>
I'm not going to do ANYTHING on Mars!  We could, in principle, land a 
man on Mars.  The cost would be enormous.  The probable return on the 
investment does not appear sufficient to tempt anyone.





More information about the questions mailing list