Post by @sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Just had a 5:30pm surprise CBC interview about leap seconds: https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/13/science/leap-second-elimination-time-standard

I didn't really have much of an opinion on leap seconds until I talked through it with the journalist. But wow, leap seconds are such a bad idea! What a silly way to get our timekeeping to work with the imperfect, constantly changing orbital system we live in.

@sundogplanets I used to work on astrodynamics software and leap seconds, the TT/UT delta, and the empirical earth orientation parameter tables were the bane of my existence. It always felt like I was trying to use astronomical time and space coordinate systems that were invented in the renaissance to fly spacecraft in the 20th and 21st centuries. (I never worked for SpaceX or so called "commercial" space :) )