[BC] 2005 will end with a leap second - and you can hear it!

[Rachel Ehrenberg]

>From Radio Netherlands:

The world's clocks are due to be reset on December 31st - by one whole
second. That's because our planet Earth has not quite kept up the
rotational pace it maintained in prior centuries. On the advice of
astronomers, who use observations of stars to keep tabs on Earth's spin,
the International Telecommunication Union has decided that the final
minute of 2005 before the stroke of midnight at Greenwich, England,
shall contain 61, rather than 60, seconds.

"People in North America who have shortwave radios and nothing better to
do on New Year's Eve can actually hear this 'leap second' correction
being made," says Roger Sinnott, a senior editor at Sky & Telescope
magazine. Tune in shortwave station WWV at 5 or 10 MHz, or CHU at 3.335
MHz, and count the 61 official seconds that will tick off the minute
starting at 6:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (3:59 p.m. PST), which is
the minute before midnight at Greenwich.

If everything goes right, personal computers, GPS receivers, and
radio-controlled clocks around the world will automatically adjust
themselves. But there is some question about this, because the last time
a leap second was added was on December 31, 1998, before most of today's
computers were manufactured.

This is the 23rd leap second to be inserted since 1972, and some
communications engineers have embarked on a campaign to abolish them as
a needless annoyance. That has many astronomers up in arms, for it would
signal the end of our fundamentally Sun- and star-based timekeeping
system.

-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - Faster than the air-speed velocity of an
                          unladen european swallow