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Scientists just voted to redefine how the world keeps time (www.scientificamerican.com)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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

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[–] 7 points 1 day ago (6 children)

What will happen to things like GPS that depend heavily on time, but cannot easily be reprogrammed in all devices that use it?

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  • [–] 1 point 22 hours ago (1 child)

    GPS doesn't handle leap seconds. Currently devices have to subtract ~18 seconds to convert from GPS time to UTC, this just means that offset will never need to be updated for a few thousand years. Other GNSS constellations may be different, but I assume they'd also be unaffected.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    I think it shouldn't matter. IIRC, the GPS algorithm depends on time differences, not absolute time. As long as the satellites are coordinated with each other, receivers won't care which parameters the absolute time matches.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago* (2 children)

    Not true. My 2015 car uses gps satellites to determine its clock. In 2019 there was a gps week number rollover due to a 10-bit counter rolling over. My car hasn't had the correct time since and the manufacturer doesn't distribute update CDs for it. I can set the clock manually and even change the settings to not auto update, but it resets every time I turn off the car.

    So while yes the satellites just count seconds, it's interpreted by other devices and the differences will confuse them.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    But does the GPS work? Is it able to correctly locate your car on the map? There are other cool things we use GPS satellites for, but their purpose is to calculate the position on a globe. A Global Positioning System, if you will.

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