Good result
You all miss the importance of stepping back from an intellectual precipice yesterday from an idea which assigns the wrong number of rotations to the equivalent amount of days.No point is discussing the accuracy of atomic clocks if scientists are 4 rotations out in 4 years as they assume the Earth turns 1465 times in 1461 days when everyone here will experience 1461 days/rotations.
The fundamental unit of time is not a second or any fraction of it,it is not the minute,hour or 24 hour day and it is not even the orbital period of the Earth in 365 days 5 hours 49 minutes.The fundamental unit of time has been known for thousands of years and it is the proportion of days to years,in this case 1461 to 4 years where an extra day is added to a constant stream of 365 days to keep us fixed within the orbital points of equinoxes and solstice.
Before everyone gets in a jam again,I suggest they start with the natural cycle and then work in how very intelligent humans overlaid a calendar structure on this natural phenomenon -
" on account of the precession of the rising of the Divine Sothis by one day in the course of 4 years.. therefore it shall be, that the year of 360 days and the 5 days added to their end, so one day as feast of Benevolent Gods [the pharaoh and family] be from this day after every 4 years added to the 5 epagomenae before the New Year, whereby all men shall learn, that what was a little defective in the order as regards the seasons and the year, as also the opinions which are contained in the rules of the learned on the heavenly orbits, are now corrected and improved.." Canopus Decree 250 BC
So,when Feb 29th comes around in a number of weeks as the 1461st rotation and within that 24 hour period there will be another sunrise and sunset due to the rotation of the Earth,somehow you all may learn how we managed to screw it up with the most impeccable credentials -
"The Earth spins on its axis about 366 and 1/4 times each year, but there are only 365 and 1/4 days per year." NASA
The 'leap second' merely exposed an issue that is many,many magnitudes worse than the Piltdown Man episode with far more at stake.The problem is that the same people are acting in the same way -
"Anthropologists refer to the Pilltdown man hoax as 'another instance
of desire for fame leading a scholar into dishonesty' and boast that
the unmasking of the deception is 'a tribute to the persistence and
skill of modern research'. Persistence and skill indeed! When they
have taken over forty years to discover the difference between an
ancient fossil and a modern chimpanzee! A chimpanzee could have done
it quicker." Daily Sketch