Indeed, I find it highly ironically; (but also sadly), amusing that an un-believer like Ken constantly thinks that he knows the mind of Almighty God because of the fact that, time and time again, Ken tells us about just *how very angry* that Almighty God must be *with His saved children* because, according to Ken's standards, they make so very many mistakes and short-comings when they talk about things such as Creation, etc.

Kenny boy, let me ask you a question here:

If you truly believe that Almighty God is so very angry, upset, etc. towards His saved children because of our many sins and imperfections, then, just *HOW MUCH MORE ANGRY* do you think that Almighty God is at *YOU* because of the fact that *YOU* continue to neglect/reject receiving His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as your personal Lord and Savior?!


Chess Fan

Hey Ken....WOW, CF is agreeing with you once again. Isn't it nice?

Clearly not a married couple.

The ones in the picture??

Who else?

I'll have to keep this in mind next time I'm in time pressure.

It is nice, Inky. Amazing what a little thought and background reading will do for someone's outlook.

Edit: just ran across a quote today from another site: you are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own 'facts'.

The author than soundly demolished that poster's facts, and he managed to do it in just one or two sentences per "fact". I will strive to attain that level of precision...it is very effective.

Change the measurement, change the rate! Or the rate number! Would it be possible?

The 2 seconds per 100,000 year rate sounds more like a belief than fact! On the web, no one seems to be telling how it is arrived at, but they are all authoritatively talking about the magic rate.

Here is a wiki article on leap second. You could at least see 3 definitions for second.

Leap Second

1. 1/86400 of mean solar day, a definition up until middle of 20th century.
2. A 1956 re-definition in terms of annual orbital revolution of the earth around the sun.
3. A 1967 another re-definition in terms of the oscillation of an atom of cesium-133.

I would be interested to know what was the old earth slowing down rate with the old definition!

Also the current definition (using atom of cesium-133) has required only positive leap second adjustments so far, and no negative leap second adjustments. In the last 37 years from 1972, 24 leap seconds have been added. Not sure how accurate would that be when you calculate a rate from limited period numbers. But I would definitely like to compare this rate with the current study showing rate of 2s/100000year.

Ken, Rimfaxe, what would you say?

This is a good message!

Actually all 3 definitions gives the same duration of a second! The reason the definition was changed was that using 1/86400 of mean solar day is unprecise because the duration of a mean solar day changes with time, the 2nd definition has the same problem, annual orbital revolution of the earth around the sun also changes slightly over time. So to get a precise definition the 3rd definition was made. So the slowing down rate with the old definition is exactly the same as with the new definition!

The reason the scientist do not want to change the duration of a second is that if they change the duration of a second they would have to change a lot of other constants like for instance the speed of light since if the second was longer light would travel longer in that time. This would be a mess since all physic books would have to be rewritten with the new constants and no doubt it would give a lot of confusion. there already is a lot of confusion mixing up the SI units with units from other older systems, so if we should also have an new SI system and old SI system this would give a lot of confusion, so the units in the SI system are fixed for good.

The reason only positive leap seconds so far is that the duration of the second was fixed based on the mean solar day between 1750 and 1892 (the SI day) (according to the wikipedia article) and since then the earth have slowed down a little bit so current mean solar day is about 0.002 seconds longer than the SI-day, so about every 500 days the 0.002 seconds have summed up to 1 second, therefore negative leap seconds will be very rare since the other factors (changes in mass distribution) will have to be larger than the 0.002 seconds a day.

So in little more than 100 years the mean solar day has become 0.002 second longer, multiply by 1000 you get that in 100.000 years the mean solar day gets 2 seconds longer.

It is according to the laws of physics that a rotating planet with fluids (water) is effected by tidal forces and therefore slows down.

However the 2 seconds in 100.000 years is not a fixed constant, teh rate can change over time due to mass distribution on earth, for instance the amount of ice on the poles, and probably also other effects like colliding with an asteroide or something.