Leaping Seconds

Last week there was a news article on new proposed standard to get rid of GMT. British media has passionate arguments against it as they view it as diminishing “Britain’s role as Victorian superpower”. If the new standards are accepted, then Paris-based International Bureau of Weights and Measures will become the new guardian of time. France has lobbied for “Paris Mean Time” at a conference to set a world standard time in United States in 1884. Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) a standard from 1972 uses atomic clocks across the world to measure time accurately. Vacillations in Earth’s rotation will affect these atomic clocks and hence adjusted by milliseconds called as “leap seconds”. Apparently there were 24 leap second adjustments were made since UTC was accepted in 1972 to match the “solar time”. These minute changes could potentially wreak havoc in online systems. Google blog talks about how critical accurate time is to them. They use Network Time Protocol (NTP) that uses UTC to synchronize clocks of computer systems.

Daylight Savings Time changed to extend my work days… Amma beats the time by keeping our clock running 15 minutes ahead. Now that we all know her trick, it hardly makes any difference – “that stupid clock is 15 minutes ahead of sanity, amma” :) The relativity of time could kill us at times – how can time change its color and speed while one is in a boring meeting or in a vacation? Time is elusive, isn’t it?