There is only a moment

If you think that 2008 has finally come to an end and are upset because you did not have time to do something - do not worry. You will have a little extra time. And to be exact - one second.

On the eve of the New Year, no matter how strange it may sound, one second will be added to the time of our life. This will be 24 in a “second jump” account starting in 1972 and the first after 2005.

It can be argued that in one second the cheetah can run about 30 meters, the phone’s signal will overcome 161,000 km, the hummingbird can flap its wings 70 times, and 8 million of your blood cells can die.

As they say, you need to appreciate every second. Especially if this second is superfluous.
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“Jump seconds” are needed to “reconcile” two different time measurement systems. Mankind traditionally counted time according to its own rotation of the Earth and its revolutions around the Sun. Within the framework of this astronomical mechanism, the second is one of the 86400th turnaround time of our planet around its axis. But due to tidal friction and other natural phenomena, this rotation slows down by about two thousandths of a second per day.

Since 1950, when atomic clocks appeared - the principle of action of which is based on the period of oscillations of cesium atoms - it became possible to measure time with high accuracy, up to a billionth of a second per day. But it was observed that every 500 days or so, the difference between the time measured by this watch and the time measured by the rotation of the Earth is ... yes, one second.

And so, at unequal intervals, the International Center for the Earth's Rotation Research, located in Frankfurt, gives a signal to stop the world's atomic clocks for exactly one second. This leads to the synchronization of the two reference systems - until the next “second jump” occurs.

“This is a purely aesthetic thing, nothing more,” says Geoff Chester, a spokesman for the United States Naval Observatory. - “Life will not stop if we just forget about the" jumping second "."

Perhaps it would really be easier to forget about her. In our digital world, the smooth functioning of a mass of electronic systems (for example, banking) depends on the most accurate time count. “Jump seconds” can destroy such systems as mobile phones, GPS-modules, computer networks and in general any equipment that is not able to perceive such “jumps”. Chester argues that "jumping seconds" may well become a much more serious problem than the notorious problem of 2000 ".

That is why the specialists of the International Union of Communications, the UN subdivisions, put forward the idea of ​​ending the amendment for the “jump second. Instead, a “jump minute” will appear, an amendment to which will be made every century.

The idea itself was inundated with a hail of criticism. For example, Judah Levin, a time and frequency specialist physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Kolo, said: “A minute is an unbearably long period of time. The only advantage is that the problem is transferred to the distant future, but this does not free us from its solution, but only allows us to calm down for a while. ”

Now the proposal of specialists of the Union is under consideration, and the final decision will be made at the World Radiocommunication Conference in 2011.

Everything needs its time.

“I think doing this is wasting time on nonsense,” says Norman Ramsey, an honorary professor of physics at Harvard University, whose atomic beam magnetic resonance work that was the basis for creating an atomic clock, brought him in 1989 year Nobel Prize in Physics. “I’m sure that for the absolute majority of people it doesn’t matter.”

The professor said that he was not going to do anything in connection with the onset of the next “jumping second” on December 31.

“That's the beauty of it,” he said with a laugh. “I won't even notice it.”

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