Scientists just voted to redefine how the world keeps time

Today an international group of scientists, diplomats, and timekeepers voted to end the leap second, which has been keeping Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) aligned with the time according to Earth’s rotation (UT1) within one second of difference.

A new system, called the “leap hour,” will allow the Earth’s rotation and official time to fall out of alignment by a full hour

www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-vote-to-end-leap-seconds-redefining-how-the-world-keeps-time/

This feels odd, id expect scientists to urge for closer unity with reality - this further distances us from it.

If we just wanted to skip leapseconds, we could have created a different paradigm not based on earths daily rotation, such as epoch time or based on some other observable and more stable instance - instead now well just be talking two orders of magnitude less precisly about our own world because we got frustrated adding leap seconds to account for our already innapropriate paradigm.

They solved this problem with ductape, and with the offbrand stuff that really makes it all look ratty and bad

Astronomy has gotten way too easy since we accepted elliptical orbits. Let’s kludge it the fuck up again.