Stan Sieler writes:
> Stan (Please, don't tell Larry about the leap seconds :) Sieler

Oh let's do.  :-)

While you could change the defined length of a day to match the true rotation
of the planet, over time you'd get out of synch again because the planet's spin
is sloooowly slowing down.  Thus eventually a "day" would be longer than it
takes for the planet to make one revolution.

Instead of increasing the number of seconds in a day to correct for this, a leap
second is observed every couple of years.  I once listened to the WWV time
signal on shortwave radio during a leap second, and I believe it went something
like this:

        23:59:55...23:59:56...23:59:57...23:59:58...23:59:59...23:59:59...0:0:0
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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