Latest International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service Stories

John Neumann for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Did you find some of your favorite websites acting wonky this weekend? If so, you may want to blame the omniscient keepers of all knowledge for that. No, not the galaxy-sized blue-skinned creatures that keep the universe in balance, but the big brains at the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), who monitor the gaps between atomic and planetary time and work to keep everything synced. As such, these...

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Is there anything a scientist can’t do? Looking past the state of mobile computing — which is already pretty amazing, when you think about it — there are scientists and researchers who are planning trips to the moon as well as growing bio-computers, living computers, in their labs. What will they think of next? With some clever understanding of the Earth’s rotation and a little trickery, scientists at the National Physical...

By Jim WolfWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Get ready for a minute with 61 seconds. Scientists are delaying the start of 2006 by the first "leap second" in seven years, a timing tweak meant to make up for changes in the Earth's rotation.The adjustment will be carried out by sticking an extra second into atomic clocks worldwide at the stroke of midnight Coordinated Universal Time, the widely adopted international standard, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology said this...