"From time to time our timekeepers must adjust their super accurate atomic clocks to synchronize them with the Earth 's slowing rotation whose day/night cycles we base our lives on ."
"Actually , that 's not true . The standard upon which the `` super accurate atomic clocks `` are based is slightly different from the actual rotation of the earth . It is as if you had two clocks that kept time slightly differently . I have to adjust the time on my grandfather clock all the time - every time I raise the weights I reset it to the correct time . It used to keep pretty good time and require resetting only about every six months but it broke and I had to replace the works . It has taken a good six months to adjust the speed to the point that it is now off by only about a minute/week . I 'm still adjusting . That 's what is happening with the `` leap seconds `` that occur from time to time . The adjustment is primarily to sync up two clocks keeping slightly different times , one of which is very accurate , the other of which varies and is slowing at the rate of 0.005 sec/year/year ."
"From time to time our timekeepers must adjust their super accurate atomic clocks to synchronize them with the Earth 's slowing rotation whose day/night cycles we base our lives on ."
"Actually , that 's not true . The standard upon which the `` super accurate atomic clocks `` are based is slightly different from the actual rotation of the earth ."