Some curious stuff...

...Before this year ends!

Reading and reading (thing that I do quite usually since TV became a stinky piece of shit) I found an interesting article about this New Year's Eve... Well, in fact is about this 31th of December... Because the last minute of this, the last day of the year will last officially 1 second more... So, it will have 61 seconds. Officially, after 23h 59m and 59s we'll have 23h 59m and 60s... And only then 00h 00m 00s... And Happy new year!

But why? Because Earth's spinning slower than before and days are longer than before... Curious, thinking about our lifestyle, that becomes faster and faster day after day! Earth's on strike, or a least it seems so!

But let's talk a little bit about history! A second was defined in 19th Century as the 86.400 part of a day (60 x 60 x 24), but they didn't know real days have different timings... Nowadays, for example, 1 real day lasts 86.400,002 seconds. That's why, since the late sixties, we base our second system not in our planet's rotation movement, but in some physical stable processes like the movement of some atoms exposed to Laser. That's how atomic watches were born, and that's why we base our system on those watches, which are very precise! In fact, the most precise atomic watch of the entire world, the NIST-F1, will keep an accurate timing, without deflecting not even a second in 60.000.000 of years.

And that's why the IERS (International Earth rotation and Reference systems Service) decides when to add one extra second to a minute, to correct the flaw between our time system and real timing.

Of course, that second isn't very important for our daily grind, but it's curious how time's so important in these days of fast food, instantaneous news, and blitzkrieg. I guess it was more traumatic back in the 16th Century, when Gregorius XIII changed the outdated Iulianus calendar and people lost 10 days!! So, the day after that 4th of October of 1582 was the 15th of October.

So, maybe this isn't very important for you, but at least you have some new anecdote for telling tomorrow before this year shifts!

Have a nice New Year's Eve party and enjoy this extra second! 2009, the Year of the Ox... it sounds promising, don't you think?