HAPPY NEW YEAR In A Second

“HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009″

Happy New Year in a second…Celebrants gearing up to say goodbye to 2008 will have to wait an extra second before popping bottles and kissing the old year goodbye…Why pursing lips to usher in the new year.

Timekeepers at the Royal Observatory of Greenwich will be adding a “leap second” of time to the clock on Wednesday, the past 30 years time statistics have added a second to offset the fractional slowing of the Earth’s rotation.

The extra second will be squeezed in on Dec. 31 after 6:59:59 p.m. and before 7 p.m. ET. Combined with the extra day on Feb. 29, 2009 Leap Year.
This will make 2008 the longest year since 1992.

The seconds have been added as needed since 1972, sometimes at the end of December and sometimes at the end of June, depending on the speed of the Earth’s rotation, that particular year.

Though the time shift is so nominal it’s not even noticeable, to us, but accumulated over a millennium…we would mean that noon, the sun would not be at it’s highest…time and the earth would slip around and the sun would be it’s highest at 1PM, instead of high noon.

If the seconds were not added, then people would lose a whole day with in tens of thousands of years. One thing for sure, I will not have to worry about that ever happening.

Who Made This Decision, you ask?

The decision to add a whole extra second to the clock was made by an international consortium of timekeepers, and announced earlier this month. Everyone seems to go along with the plan.
So…HAPPY NEW YEAR IN A SECOND!

“May we all have a prosperous and Happy New Year in 2009″
~The Baby Boomer Queen~