Saturday, March 12, 2011

So... do we still change our clocks for daylight savings?

The earthquake-cum-tsunami packed such fury that it has moved Japan's main island, Honshu, by about 8 feet. It's also caused the Earth's axis to wobble by about 4 inches – something that experts say will lead to the shortening of the day by 1.6 microseconds, or just over a millionth of a second.

These very tiny changes happen because of changes in the speed of rotation of the Earth as surface mass gets shifted around in earthquakes, says Patrick Dasgupta, professor of astrophysics in Delhi University.
Daylight savings time.

And though I grew up saying 'daylight savings', it is actually daylight saving.

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10 comments:

mahakal said...

Sounds like the earth keeps slightly accelerating her spin by these eruptions.

Steve Bates said...

It is now Daylight Wasting Time. Tomorrow it will be Daylight Saving Time.

  There is not a finer thing
  Than to travel in the Spring.
  As you tote your luggage doorward,
  Set your clocks AN HOUR FORWARD!

- SB the YSS, many years ago

ellroon said...

It was hard to get out of bed before
But now there's less sleep hours not more
It's worser than I thought it could be
I'm sure my clock is lying to me.

Steve Bates said...

Wanting sleep? well, there's no winning:
Each day's end's a day's beginning.
Clocks speak true, no ifs, ands, buts...
Your government is what is nuts!

Steve Bates said...

OT: did you experience any effects from the earthquake or tsunami?

ellroon said...

Someone went down to see the waves come in up in northern CA, was dragged in and presumed drowned. Otherwise some boats were bobbed about a little more roughly than usual, but that was it.

ellroon said...

Btw, Steve, thanks for the excellent poetry!

ellroon said...

Actually, the Crescent City port was lost... a little more wreckage than I thought: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011/03/12/calif-ore-sustained-most-us-damage-from-tsunami/

Steve Bates said...

BTW, thanks to your link, I eventually ended up at an NIST page that told me EVERYthing about Daylight Saving Time and related matters.

Another page told me of a childhood friend, WWV, which is the time standards broadcast in the US. I used to listen to it every New Year's on a shortwave radio to capture the exact moment of midnight, and once DST was in place, also every 2:00am time-change to set at least one household clock as exactly as possible. Unfortunately they don't provide that oh-so-familiar audio signal on the web, because various buffers along the way would cause the announced time to be substantially off from the correct time.

But the whole thing was a fond memory of my childhood, my days as an amateur radio operator, etc. Thanks!

ellroon said...

My husband built his own crystal set. Fond memories indeed.