How did we “calibrate” the second?

1.02K viewsOtherPlanetary Science

It seems like everything with our calendar is based around 24hr days and the number of 24hr days to revolve around the sun. But a 24hr day can be broken down to 1,440 minutes and in turn 86,400 seconds. How did we (humans) calibrate the second so that exactly 86,400 would be 1 rotation of the earth to the point where we never need something like a “leap second” like we have with leap years?

In: Planetary Science

18 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It gets so much more confusing and precise 😀 calibrating clocks across the world with NTP.. high precision local clock calibration down to nanoseconds in a small network with PTP, atomic clocks, universal coordinatedtime (UTC) vs international atomic time (TAI).. leap seconds, the leap smear ..

Time is way complicated!

You are viewing 1 out of 18 answers, click here to view all answers.