[time-nuts] deeper leap-second trouble ?

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Thu Jun 19 19:01:26 UTC 2008


As a little challenge: first the danish press release:

http://www.space.dtu.dk/Nyheder/Nyheder_paa_Space.aspx?guid={E29F2AB2-9EBD-407B-AD72-E401F5E0420C}

Here is the article:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n6/abs/ngeo203.html

>From the abstract:

	A large part of the Earth's magnetic field is generated by
	fluid motion in the molten outer core. [...] Here we show
	that changes in the magnetic field occurring over only a
	few months, indicative of fluid flow at the top of the core,
	can in fact be resolved.  [...]  We find that the
	core flow is spatially localized and involves rapid variations
	over a few months, with surprisingly large local accelerations.
	[...]

The results mean that the DUT we measure in practice is not guaranteed
to have no high frequency components, it merely happens to not have
(had) them (in the past 50 years).

This is particularly interesting, since the widely accepted theory
that the earths magnetic field is spiralling towards a pole reversal,
mean that the electrical/magnetical field will diverge from the
axis of rotation from now on.

Nobody has any idea what will happen in practice...

Poul-Henning

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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