SHARING MY HAPPINESS!

jtotheizzoe:

Time Stands Still
Tonight’s “leap second” and why the Earth sucks at keeping time
If you stand very still tonight, holding your breath in the still of midnight darkness, you’ll hear the sound of all the clocks in the world pausing for one second. Actually, you probably won’t hear anything, but you should know that today will be one second longer than a normal day. Why?
When trains began to make long-distance travel possible, with schedules dependable down to the minute, there was a worldwide demand for standardized time. So we got Greenwich Mean Time, which defined the measure of a day as the average time of a single rotation of the Earth from the perspective of one Englishman staring up at the sky in Greenwich. In 1820, this just so happened to be 86,400 seconds, or 24 hours.
The problem is that the Earth’s rotation is slowing down, and a “solar day” isn’t exactly 86,400 seconds anymore. The Earth doesn’t care about our time system one bit, apparently.
How does that work? The Moon pulls on the Earth due to its own gravity. When that’s combined with the natural gravity of the Earth, we get two “high-tide” bulges on opposite sides of our planet. But the bulges don’t line up perfectly with the equator, and the Moon actually pulls on the ocean enough to create a tiny amount of friction. That friction is slowing our rotation by about 0.002 seconds per day per century. Eventually the Earth and Moon will be “tidally locked” and each will have a constant face to the other (like the Moon does to Earth today). Phil Plait explains this all pretty well here. Moreover, earthquakes and all sorts of other stuff mean that this “slowing” business is also irregular.
Earth sucks as a timepiece.
Since the 1970’s, our “official time” has been kept by atomic clocks, accurate to one second every 250 million years. We actually changed the official definition of a second to be based on atoms instead of 1/86,400th of a day. But many traditional clocks, not to mention our bodies, are basing their day on day/night averages, and the atomic clocks are basing it on cesium atoms (far more accurately). The day/night clocks are lagging behind! So on a regular basis, the Time Lords of Earth let the atomic clock time pause for one second to bring them closer to sync. That’s a leap second.
If we didn’t do this, and just let the clocks go their separate ways, we might cause serious problems to systems like GPS software that depend on super-super-accurate time-keeping.
So tonight, the official clocks will show 23:59:60 before rolling over to tomorrow, and everything is in its right place. Don’t worry if you forget to sync your watch. You’ll just be a second early everywhere tomorrow.
More detailed factoids from Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy.

Time Stands Still

Tonight’s “leap second” and why the Earth sucks at keeping time

If you stand very still tonight, holding your breath in the still of midnight darkness, you’ll hear the sound of all the clocks in the world pausing for one second. Actually, you probably won’t hear anything, but you should know that today will be one second longer than a normal day. Why?

When trains began to make long-distance travel possible, with schedules dependable down to the minute, there was a worldwide demand for standardized time. So we got Greenwich Mean Time, which defined the measure of a day as the average time of a single rotation of the Earth from the perspective of one Englishman staring up at the sky in Greenwich. In 1820, this just so happened to be 86,400 seconds, or 24 hours.

The problem is that the Earth’s rotation is slowing down, and a “solar day” isn’t exactly 86,400 seconds anymore. The Earth doesn’t care about our time system one bit, apparently.

How does that work? The Moon pulls on the Earth due to its own gravity. When that’s combined with the natural gravity of the Earth, we get two “high-tide” bulges on opposite sides of our planet. But the bulges don’t line up perfectly with the equator, and the Moon actually pulls on the ocean enough to create a tiny amount of friction. That friction is slowing our rotation by about 0.002 seconds per day per century. Eventually the Earth and Moon will be “tidally locked” and each will have a constant face to the other (like the Moon does to Earth today). Phil Plait explains this all pretty well here. Moreover, earthquakes and all sorts of other stuff mean that this “slowing” business is also irregular.

Earth sucks as a timepiece.

Since the 1970’s, our “official time” has been kept by atomic clocks, accurate to one second every 250 million years. We actually changed the official definition of a second to be based on atoms instead of 1/86,400th of a day. But many traditional clocks, not to mention our bodies, are basing their day on day/night averages, and the atomic clocks are basing it on cesium atoms (far more accurately). The day/night clocks are lagging behind! So on a regular basis, the Time Lords of Earth let the atomic clock time pause for one second to bring them closer to sync. That’s a leap second.

If we didn’t do this, and just let the clocks go their separate ways, we might cause serious problems to systems like GPS software that depend on super-super-accurate time-keeping.

So tonight, the official clocks will show 23:59:60 before rolling over to tomorrow, and everything is in its right place. Don’t worry if you forget to sync your watch. You’ll just be a second early everywhere tomorrow.

More detailed factoids from Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy.

Reblogged 10 months ago from jtotheizzoe

836 notes

bakeitinacake:

One time I baked an Almond Joy candy bar into a vanilla cupcake and it was delicious.

Recipe here! Yum!

Reblogged 11 months ago from bakeitinacake

322 notes

eataku:

The first new Japanese Kit Kat of the trip has been discovered… Salt & Puff!!

This one has salted rice puffs mixed into the outer layer of chocolate…

Reblogged 11 months ago from eataku

30 notes

bakeitinacake:

Today is the day your life is officially complete because Cookie Crisp cereal is now in a brownie! Finally, right?

Here’s how to make them.

Reblogged 11 months ago from bakeitinacake

567 notes

milkmadeicecream:

flavor of the day: Shireshack’s StarCrunch
chocolate rice cereal, caramel and marshmallow marbling

Holy moley this may be the best thing that we’ve never created. That’s right, we didn’t make it, our pals at Shireshack did. As aforementioned, they’re working with us this summer and have taken to crafting up their own unique flavors at home and sharing pints with us. I had to stop myself from eating the whole pint so we could take some shots of the ‘scream.

Inspired by a southern candy treat, the Star Crunch, this is a chocolate rice cereal infused ice cream with chunks of caramel chocolate marshmallow rice crisps.

Reblogged 11 months ago from milkmadeicecream

163 notes

bakeitinacake:

It’s time for summer! And one of my favorite summer berries is the blueberry (don’t tell the strawberry, okay?). In my ode to summer (cupcake style) mini blueberry pies are baked into a vanilla cupcake and topped with a slightly tart lemon curd buttercream. YUM.

Here’s the recipe!

Reblogged 11 months ago from bakeitinacake

345 notes