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Personally, I Blame the Democrats
Fark linked up this story noting that for the past five years scientists haven't needed to add a "leap second" to keep hyper-precise atomic clocks in synch with the earth's orbit. They needed to do it for more than twenty years, then suddenly stopped. Nobody knows why.
The story has the story quite wrong. It's not the annual orbit, it's the daily rotation, that does, or does not, require leap seconds.
See: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/leapsec.html for more than you may want to know about leap seconds.
Also, the rotation of Earth has, on average, been accelerating since the mid 1970s, but still remained, on average, more than 24 hours, but by few enough milliseconds that leap seconds have not been required in recent years. We are still using up the latest one.
See: http://maia.usno.navy.mil/lplot1.gif but interpret LOD as meaning length of day in excess of 24 hours.
Posted by: JerryB on December 30, 2003 02:03 PMGah. Misread the article. Thanks for the fact-check!
Posted by: Scott on December 30, 2003 02:06 PMFrom the article:
"The rate at which the Earth travels through space had slowed ever so slightly, and as a result was completing its 365-day journey around the sun one second behind schedule. "
It appears that you read it as it was meant to be read.
The reporter might have done better simply by qouting NIST's news release at: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2003_1219.htm#greeting :-)
Posted by: JerryB on December 30, 2003 03:04 PM