Some person in authority–I don’t know who, very likely the astronomer royal–has decided that although for such a beastly month as February twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty, one year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.
That’s what we call "Leap Year"–when we get an extra day in the year (making it kind of a misnomer–and yes, I know that it wasn’t the astronomer royal who decided this).
This year, though, we get a leap second.
At 7 p.m. EST (4 p.m. PST), we’ll have an extra second inserted to account for the fact that the earth is slowing down its rotation (but ever so slowly, so we don’t notice).
Have fun with your extra second!
Be sure to party like it’s 1999!
GET THE STORY (WHICH WILL TAKE YOU LONGER THAN A SECOND TO READ).
You mean I have to wait longer for the start of the Giants/Raiders game?!!!!!!!
fianlly I’ll have time too… whoops… times up…
It’s called a Leap Year because usually, a given date is one weekday after what it was last year — this year, Christmas was a Sunday, which means last year it was a Saturday, and next year it’s a Monday.
But the year before that it was a Thursday. The leap year made it leap the Friday.
My last pedantic fact for this year. One hopes. 0:)
Jimmy wrote: “…the earth is slowing down its rotation (but ever so slowly, so we don’t notice).”
Speak for yourself, Jimmy.
“At 7 p.m. EST (4 p.m. PST), we’ll have an extra second inserted…”
In the words of Marvin, the Paranoid Android;
“Oh, not another one…”
As one can see here, ftp://maia.usno.navy.mil/ser7/tai-utc.dat, leap seconds are far from rare, but this year the media picked up on it as a sign of the end of times, or something as news-worthy as that… 😀
Happy New Year to y’all, filled with His peace and blessings.
Ok, it was worth the wait.