Daylight Savings Time Inanity
Kirt's Cogitations™ #85

RF Cafe University"Factoids," "Kirt's Cogitations," and "Tech Topics Smorgasbord" are all manifestations of my ranting on various subjects relevant (usually) to the overall RF Cafe theme. All may be accessed on these pages:

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Daylight Savings Time Inanity

We near the time again for the inane practice of "springing ahead" by one hour on our clocks. This biannual hour time shift is a minor inconvenience to the world's timekeepers compared to adding occasional leap days and most annoyingly, leap seconds. In 1967, by international agreement, the second was defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 transition periods of the cesium-133 atom. Earth's orbital period is not consistent from year to year due to erratic perturbations of the other planets and tidal effects of the moon that are slowing the rotational period of the earth. This causes leap seconds to be added at irregular intervals to maintain agreement with the atomic clocks, which can cause real problems when synchronizing aviation, stock market, scientific, astronomical and many other timing systems. Since leap seconds were first implemented in 1972, 22 seconds have been added. Estimates say the Earth has lost 3 hours total in the last 2000 years. Maybe this explains why my work days seem longer any more.