logoalt Hacker News

himata4113today at 4:52 PM2 repliesview on HN

How about a leap minute instead so we only have to worry about this when it's not a problem anymore :)? We will either hit the fermi filter or accend intelligence.


Replies

layer8today at 5:34 PM

The length of day increases by around 1.7 milliseconds per century long term (due to the moon’s gravity continuously slowing down Earth’s rotation), which without leaps seconds translates to around one total minute per century. Note that this is cumulative: next century you will need two leap minutes, and so on. Of course, there are significant shorter-term variations in Earth’s rotation due to other factors, so it isn’t quite that smooth in practice.

There was a resolution in 2022 to make a decision in or before 2035, to increase the allowable deviation from one second to a longer interval, like one minute. But that would become more frequent in the long run as well, and likely would still cause disruptions whenever it happens. Though on the other hand there would likely be a longer advance notice for it as well.

show 1 reply
wmftoday at 5:41 PM

That's much worse than the Y2K problem.

show 1 reply