[lyner]

I seem to remember hearing, recently, that 'they' are planning to ignore  the leap second problem for all but the important scientific applications because of the cost involved in administering it.
In yet another sense, it would seem that Science is becoming more and more detached from the rest of the world.
Everyone will be out of step but us.

[DoctorBeaver]

I remember hearing that too but I can't remember the details.

[thebrain13]

I thought they were delaying it because the rotation of the earth has been shown to be speeding up.

[another_someone]

Not even sure why most scientists would care about the leap seconds - I would have thought the only scientists that would care are the astronomers, and for the rest, even the leap days are scarcely relevant (I would expect that most scientists are only really interested in relative time, not absolute astronomical time).

[Alandriel]

I thought they were delaying it because the rotation of the earth has been shown to be speeding up.

Tell me more about this, please..  []

[DoctorBeaver]

I thought they were delaying it because the rotation of the earth has been shown to be speeding up.

I thought it was slowing down

[lyner]

It could be worse - we could be living in Ethiopia.
(Perhaps some of us are!)

[thebrain13]

alandriel, nobody knows why the earth is speeding up. Scientists project that most things should be slowing down, but they arent. Nobody really know why that is the case.

[lyner]

Not even sure why most scientists would care about the leap seconds -

I would if I was on a plane with GPS.  It would be very useful to know which particular bit of the Earth was underneath me.

[JimBob]

AH, This could be a reason. It would affect my science significantly over time as GPS is one of the tools used to measure just about ever location surveyed, outcrop measured, distance measured, etc., etc.

[another_someone]

Not even sure why most scientists would care about the leap seconds -

I would if I was on a plane with GPS.  It would be very useful to know which particular bit of the Earth was underneath me.

But how is this effected by leap seconds?  What matters here is the transit time (the relative time) of the radio signal; but you are only concerned with the position of the satellite in orbit, and the time for radio signals to travel from the satellite to reach the GPS receiver, and so long as both the satellite and the receiver can agree about whether the leap second is used or not, it makes no difference to either if leap seconds are accounted for or not (so long as they are both in agreement on the matter).

[lyner]

You are saying that it is only necessary to know your position relative to calibration points on the Earth - fair enough.