On 28/10/11 08:53, Tom Lane wrote:
Gavin Flower<gavinflo...@archidevsys.co.nz> writes:
Actually, a minute is not always 60 seconds, as you can legally have 62
seconds in a minute!
<pedantry>
There never have been, and will never be, two leap seconds declared in
the same minute --- the need for such would require that the authorities
in charge of declaring leap seconds had been asleep at the switch when
they should have declared the first one, and for awhile afterwards
as well, since the natural spacing of such events is well over a year.
Even if they did get that far behind, they would catch up by declaring
*one* added leap second in several successive opportunities.
The idea that there could need to be 62 seconds in a minute appears to
stem from a typographical error in an ancient version of some Unix
documentation or other (hardly a reference material for timekeeping),
which has been faithfully copied into a bunch of later computer-oriented
standards. But it's wrong, no matter how many places say that. Ask an
astronomer rather than a computer scientist, if you're not convinced.
</pedantry>
regards, tom lane
Thanks for the explanation!
If we ever really needed the 62 second minute, and the timekeepers were
not sleeping on the job, it would be because of a catastrophic
geological event that would almost certainly mean that the survivors
would be having more pressing concerns... (major earthquakes affect the
speed of the Earth's rotation - microseconds in the case of the last
major Japanese earthquake)
--
Sent via pgsql-bugs mailing list (pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-bugs
