Save the "Leap Second"!!!!!

[TLM4x4]

READY FOR 2006? YOU'LL HAVE TO WAIT A SECOND!

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* Note to Editors/Producers: This release is accompanied by *
* a publication-quality graphic; see details below. *
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December 21, 2005 -- Cambridge, MA -- 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 megahertz, or CHU at 3.335
megahertz, 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.

For more about the leap-second controversy, see "Save the Leap Second" by
Belgian astronomer and engineer Christian Steyaert in the December 2005
issue of SKY & TELESCOPE magazine. For the convenience of accredited
reporters, editors, and producers, a free 178-kilobyte PDF of the article
may be downloaded here:

http://SkyandTelescope.com/aboutsky/...0512134134.pdf

To open the PDF, you'll need a free copy of Adobe Reader software, which
can be downloaded here:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Additional resources are available on the following Web sites:

The Future of Leap Seconds
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/onlinebib.html

Leap Years & Leap Seconds
http://tf.nist.gov/timefreq/general/leaps.htm

NIST Time Scale Data Archive
http://tf.nist.gov/timefreq/pubs/bul...leapsecond.htm

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SKY & TELESCOPE is pleased to make available to our colleagues in the news
media a publication-quality illustration explaining why Earth's rotation is
slowing down. Permission is granted for one-time, nonexclusive use in print
and broadcast media, as long as appropriate credit (as noted in the
caption) is included. Web publication must include a link to
SkyandTelescope.com.

To download the graphic and read the caption, please see the online version
of this press release:

http://SkyandTelescope.com/aboutsky/...cle_1645_1.asp

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Sky Publishing Corp. was founded in 1941 by Charles A. Federer Jr. and
Helen Spence Federer, the original editors of SKY & TELESCOPE magazine. The
company's headquarters are in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In addition to SKY & TELESCOPE
and SkyandTelescope.com, the company publishes NIGHT SKY magazine (a
bimonthly for beginners with a Web site at NightSkyMag.com), two annuals
(BEAUTIFUL UNIVERSE and SKYWATCH), as well as books, star atlases, posters,
prints, globes, and other fine astronomy products.

-end-
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[CVV1]

thats kinda neat in a way