JamulBlog

In the geeky argument department: There has been a big (if obscure) debate about leap-seconds for several years now.  Most people don't even know about leap-seconds, but they are actually a pretty simple idea: they compensate for variations in the length of the day, which is unsteadily and very slowly getting longer.  The lengthening is mainly the result of tidal forces on the Earth's oceans, and to a lesser extent, its molten core.  If these changes were precisely predictable, there wouldn't be any debate – we'd simply make rules (like the rules for leap-years) and everybody's clocks would take those rules into account.  But these variations are not predictable, so there's no way to bake any rules into the clocks – and that's the basis for the debate.  Basically, some people think that leap-seconds are worth all the trouble they cause in high-tech systems, and some people think they're not.  The two camps have been trying to reconcile their differences for almost 10 years now, and recently they decided to kick the can down the road for another two years.