Letters from the June 24, 2006, issue of Science News
By Science News
Timely suggestions
Clock time has long been out of step with the heavens (“To Leap or Not to Leap,” SN: 4/22/06, p. 248). Since the adoption of time zones in the 19th century, we have accepted disparities of as much as 30 minutes at the edges of the time zones (more in some cases since time zones are set by politics, not geography). And of course, the 20th century brought daylight savings time, under which most Americans accept a 1-hour disparity between April and October. While I don’t like the idea of abandoning leap seconds altogether, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to let the disparity build up to an hour before making a correction.