[time-nuts] How many seconds in a year?

David Forbes dforbes at dakotacom.net
Wed Oct 15 00:50:46 UTC 2008


At 9:38 AM +1100 10/15/08, Neville Michie wrote:
>Hi,
>the GPS system obviously counts seconds, and weeks.  When the solar
>year develops a  phase
>difference of more than half a second the UTC crowd  consider a leap
>second, so what is the current
>rotational velocity of the Earth, either WRT the Sun or the stars? In
>seconds.
>I could find many answers on Google but none that seemed good enough
>to set your clock by.
>By clock I just mean a rubidium clock that is harmonised to the GPS
>system.
>cheers, Neville Michie

Neville,

Unfortunately, the Earth's rotation and revolution around are not as 
stable as the oscillations of your rubidium clock.

There is no formula for leap seconds; the folks who insert or 
subtract the leap seconds do so using observations of the stars as a 
guide. You could say that leap seconds represent the noisy 
least-significant digit in the Earth's somewhat jerky movement. 
(Jerky relative to the smoothness of a rubidium clock, that is.)

It would be convenient for clockmakers if they calculated the best 
fit to a long-term trend of the Earth's behavior and allocated leap 
seconds based on that fit, but alas they do not.

So there is no way to build a clock today that is guaranteed to count 
seconds correctly in future years, short of having it receive leap 
second announcements twice a year and adjust its timekeeping 
accordingly.

-- 

--David Forbes, Tucson, AZ
http://www.cathodecorner.com/



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