Moon stretches Year 2005 by a Second

Finally it is official. To stay in consistent with Earth's rotation, scientists would be adding one second in atomic clocks, so as to be consistent with the Earth's rotation. This is second instance of second being added, first one being when a second was added on June 30th 1972. So far 22 seconds have been added.

Earth's rotation has been slowing down and to keep pace with the changed time, clocks would be tweaked to keep pace with changed time.

And what caused Earth's rotation slow down? The moon's gravitational pull! Moon's gravitational pull tugs on the Earth's surface and both land and water bulge out toward the moon on one side and consequently away from the moon on the other. These tidal bulges take time to form. Friction between the ocean and the ocean floor slows the process down. By the time the bulges do form, the Earth has spun a bit on its axis.

As the moon pulls, it draws the tidal bulge toward itself in the opposite direction of the Earth's rotation. That slows the rotation down by a small amount.

Leap seconds are required every so often to keep our clocks in sync with solar time used by astronomers. Amendment by a second may look cynical at first instance but scientists feel if this disparity was not corrected, the error could increase to several seconds over the time; and would very quickly make software and possibly hardware used by astronomers obsolete.

Since the Edo period, the knowledge of astronomy grew more sophisticated, the discrepancy between the calendar and actual astronomical events, such as eclipses of the sun and moon, became an issue, there arose a movement to amend the calendar and since that period amendments to calendar are a regular feature.

In a world increasingly run by time dependent technology, physicists and astrophysicists have long been entangled with a debate regarding the role and future of time. On one side of the there is a view that this adjustment could lead to expensive, unreasonable and perhaps even fatal disruption of some software such as those being used in everyday operations like mobiles, power grid, air traffic control one the other side are those who believe in perfection.

This is a very small change and history is replete with many major changes. Some of them are:

Summary of the 1752 Calendar Change

31 December 1750 was followed by 1 January 1750
24 March 1750 was followed by 25 March 1751
31 December 1751 was followed by 1 January 1752
2 September 1752 was followed by 14 September 1752
31 December 1752 was followed by 1 January 1753

Note that the 1752 calendar change occurred in a series of steps.

Just imagine your eighteenth-century ancestors going to bed on Wednesday, September 2nd and waking up on Thursday, September 14th. What would have been September 3rd was actually September 14th in the year 1752. They lost those eleven days from their lives. September 1752 had only nineteen days.