[LM_NET] Time Change this New Year

[Mary Ludwick <ludwick@SWBELL.NET>]

Time will stand still for one second on New Year's Eve, as we ring in the
New Year on that Wednesday night. As a result, you'll have an extra second
to celebrate because a "Leap Second" will be added to 2008 to let a lagging
Earth catch up to super-accurate clocks. By international agreement, the
world's timekeepers, in order to keep their official  clocks in step with
the world's irregular but gradually slowing rotation, have decreed that a
Second be inserted between 2008 and 2009.  

The extra second, ordered by the world's nominal timekeeper, the
International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, will be marked
officially at the stroke of midnight on Wednesday in Greenwich, England, the
home of what is popularly known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) – Coordinated
Universal Time (UTC) to the more technically inclined – the standard time
for the planet.

So at precisely 23:59:60 at Greenwich, England, on New Year's Eve, there
will be a one-second void before the onset of midnight and the start of the
New Year. Wednesday will see the 24th Leap Second that has been needed since
the practice was initiated in 1972, and will be the first in three years.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20081226/sc_space/2009toarrivenotasecondtoosoo
n
<http://owamail.irvingisd.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://news.yahoo.co
m/s/space/20081226/sc_space/2009toarrivenotasecondtoosoon> 

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/081208-leap-second.html]Leap
<http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/081208-leap-second.html%5DLeap> 

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/time_scitues_020430-1.h
tml]atomic
<http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/time_scitues_020430-1.
html%5Datomic>  


Mary Croix Ludwick
Librarian, Thomas Haley Elementary
Irving, Texas (near Dallas)
mludwick@irvingisd.net
ludwick@swbell.net (home)




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