Time Too Good to Be True

Time Too Good to Be True
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-3/p10.html

Without wishing to cause unnecessary distress, I would like to call
attention to a couple of issues concerning time. The first is merely
calendraic but the second concerns the future of time itself.

The first issue is that we may have to say farewell to leap seconds.
Leap seconds, as you might recall, are the occasional one-second
adjustments of our clocks that are made to maintain harmony between
the astronomical and atomic time scales. Personally, I would be sorry
to see leap seconds go because that would cost me the pleasure of
mulling over the best way to spend my next one. Although a mere
second might seem to be too short to cause jubilation, I believe any
gift of time deserves to be treasured. Also, one second is not really
that short. It is long enough to record a few million high-energy
scattering events, and in femtosecond physics, one second is
virtually an eternity. Also, one second is sufficient for a word or
quick kiss that might change your life.

See: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-3/p10.html

Sam Wormley wrote:


I do not know what to say.
That page was fascinating reading.
Doubt I grokked 10% of its implications.
thank you.

Sam Wormley wrote:

Leap seconds are slowly killing us. Every leap second they introduce makes
the exact time of your death fall one second earlier. Man, I wish I'd been
around during the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Ten
whole extra days of life! I don't understand those people who thought they'd
lost ten days.

-- Ben

wrote:


        I'll second that.

Sam Wormley wrote:

First, cool article.

Second, the discussion boils down to the concept of average
signal-to-noise ratio. Beyond a certain precision, the signal will be
swamped by the noise created by the various factors cited;
gravitational blue shift, tidal oscillations, plate tectonic motions,
compression/decompression of the earth's crust due to the affects of
water (e.g. Amazon basin) and glacial retreat/advance. EE's deal with
SNR all the time.

--Best regards,
--Mike Jr.