WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

1
00:00:00.150 --> 00:00:02.140
- I'm just outside the town of Gudhjem

2
00:00:02.140 --> 00:00:04.600
on the northeast coast
of Bornholm in Denmark.

3
00:00:04.600 --> 00:00:06.010
It's a little out of the way.

4
00:00:06.010 --> 00:00:07.730
To get to this point from Copenhagen

5
00:00:07.730 --> 00:00:10.380
I had to drive across the Oresund bridge
and through Sweden...

6
00:00:10.380 --> 00:00:13.600
GPS: "Take the second exit and stay on
'Dag-hammer-schultz-vag'."

7
00:00:13.600 --> 00:00:17.110
...then take a 90 minute ferry ride,
and then drive across the island.

8
00:00:17.110 --> 00:00:21.080
But this island, or more specifically,
a north-south line across this island

9
00:00:21.080 --> 00:00:24.560
starting right here, is the only
bit of Denmark that is exactly

10
00:00:24.560 --> 00:00:30.200
15 degrees east of Greenwich in London,
exactly 1/24th of the way around the Earth.

11
00:00:30.200 --> 00:00:32.700
which means that the sun
is highest in the sky here

12
00:00:32.700 --> 00:00:35.560
exactly one hour before Greenwich.

13
00:00:35.570 --> 00:00:39.733
This lines defines
Central European Time for Denmark.

14
00:00:40.920 --> 00:00:42.860
To explain why there's
a problem with that,

15
00:00:42.860 --> 00:00:46.260
we need to talk to someone
back where I started.

16
00:00:46.260 --> 00:00:49.440
- The observatory we are seeing here

17
00:00:49.440 --> 00:00:53.660
used to be the official
timekeeping of Denmark,

18
00:00:53.660 --> 00:00:58.390
so it actually provided what time
the national time in Denmark was.

19
00:00:58.390 --> 00:01:03.390
In 1893 a law was
put in effect in Denmark,

20
00:01:03.400 --> 00:01:09.680
at which point the time of Denmark was
synchronised with international time zones.

21
00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:17.880
So at that point in time, communications,
transportation across borders

22
00:01:17.880 --> 00:01:24.060
had become so fast, so international
that it was becoming a problem

23
00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:27.470
that every country had its
own national timescale.

24
00:01:27.470 --> 00:01:30.010
- Back before railways and
modern telecommunications,

25
00:01:30.010 --> 00:01:33.140
every town and village in the world
ran on its own time.

26
00:01:33.140 --> 00:01:37.400
12 o'clock was when the sun was highest
in the sky, on average, wherever you were.

27
00:01:37.400 --> 00:01:40.080
That's called mean solar noon.

28
00:01:40.080 --> 00:01:42.140
Once the world started to
move fast enough, though,

29
00:01:42.140 --> 00:01:45.460
every town and village having
its own time became a problem.

30
00:01:45.470 --> 00:01:49.790
And steadily over decades, governments
agreed that the official legal time

31
00:01:49.790 --> 00:01:52.690
would be the same in each region,
in each time zone.

32
00:01:52.690 --> 00:01:55.960
And that each time zone would be offset
by a round number

33
00:01:55.960 --> 00:01:58.340
compared to the time
at Greenwich in London.

34
00:01:58.340 --> 00:02:02.090
The closest round number to Copenhagen
was one hour, 15 degrees east,

35
00:02:02.090 --> 00:02:03.880
and so Denmark chose that.

36
00:02:03.880 --> 00:02:07.690
The clocks everywhere in the country were
changed to agree with mean solar noon

37
00:02:07.690 --> 00:02:08.793
at this line.

38
00:02:09.650 --> 00:02:11.470
But then along came the Information Age,

39
00:02:11.470 --> 00:02:14.680
and it turned out that
wasn't quite good enough

40
00:02:14.680 --> 00:02:16.780
because the Earth wobbles.

41
00:02:16.780 --> 00:02:19.090
- Earth wobbles a bit in its rotation

42
00:02:19.090 --> 00:02:24.570
and that means that it's not exactly
the same all year round,

43
00:02:24.570 --> 00:02:30.410
and more than that, Earth rotation
also slows a bit over time

44
00:02:30.410 --> 00:02:32.970
because of tidal forces from the Moon.

45
00:02:32.970 --> 00:02:36.280
If we were actually, in Denmark
to follow our own time,

46
00:02:36.280 --> 00:02:38.280
like our mean solar time,

47
00:02:38.280 --> 00:02:41.830
we would be off with some
hundredths of a second,

48
00:02:41.830 --> 00:02:44.500
and this would actually make it difficult

49
00:02:44.500 --> 00:02:47.220
for Danish financial
companies, for instance,

50
00:02:47.220 --> 00:02:49.800
to actually trade on stock markets.

51
00:02:49.800 --> 00:02:53.830
- Once humanity had got the ability
to track the Earth's rotation precisely

52
00:02:53.830 --> 00:02:56.060
we found out that noon drifts a little,

53
00:02:56.060 --> 00:02:59.690
by a tiny and different
fraction of a second each day.

54
00:02:59.690 --> 00:03:03.089
And when computers, and clocks,
and scientists around the world

55
00:03:03.089 --> 00:03:06.680
need to be accurate to within
that tiny fraction of a second,

56
00:03:06.680 --> 00:03:07.750
that's a problem.

57
00:03:07.750 --> 00:03:10.680
So the scientific community agreed
to ignore the wobble

58
00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:14.910
and created
Coordinated Universal Time, UTC,

59
00:03:14.910 --> 00:03:17.370
which doesn't care about
the Earth's movement.

60
00:03:17.370 --> 00:03:20.060
To your phone, your computer
and to your bank,

61
00:03:20.060 --> 00:03:22.410
to basically everyone
apart from astronomers,

62
00:03:22.410 --> 00:03:26.460
a day is precisely 86,400 seconds.

63
00:03:26.460 --> 00:03:30.960
As measured by the average of a network
of atomic clocks around the world.

64
00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:35.750
If you want to be really detailed, then on screen
is the full formal definition of a day.

65
00:03:35.750 --> 00:03:38.700
And every time the Earth's wobble
threatens to drift out of sync

66
00:03:38.700 --> 00:03:42.410
with our standard,
we add a leap second to UTC,

67
00:03:42.410 --> 00:03:45.410
either skipping a second
or counting a second twice

68
00:03:45.410 --> 00:03:50.280
to get UTC back in line
with the annoyingly real Earth and stars.

69
00:03:50.280 --> 00:03:54.020
The catch is, [sighs] Denmark
never updated its laws.

70
00:03:54.020 --> 00:03:57.280
- The official law in Denmark is defined
by a law from 1893

71
00:03:57.280 --> 00:04:00.740
which states that Denmark follows mean solar time.

72
00:04:00.740 --> 00:04:04.770
In reality Denmark follows the
Universal Coordinated Time,

73
00:04:04.770 --> 00:04:08.410
the atomic clock time which is used
all around the world.

74
00:04:08.410 --> 00:04:11.460
So I made a petition to
Parliament in Denmark

75
00:04:11.460 --> 00:04:13.640
to try to change this law.

76
00:04:13.640 --> 00:04:17.570
Some Danish media took up this story

77
00:04:17.570 --> 00:04:19.950
and following that, a member
of the Danish Parliament

78
00:04:19.950 --> 00:04:23.210
actually made a question to the minister,

79
00:04:23.210 --> 00:04:24.730
and the minister then said that he

80
00:04:24.730 --> 00:04:27.660
was actually interested
in looking into this

81
00:04:27.660 --> 00:04:30.660
and maybe make changes to the law.

82
00:04:30.660 --> 00:04:32.560
- As I record this, the error is tiny,

83
00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:34.750
it's only about .04 seconds,

84
00:04:34.750 --> 00:04:37.460
but that's just based on when I happen
to be filming here.

85
00:04:37.460 --> 00:04:39.420
By the time this video goes live,

86
00:04:39.420 --> 00:04:42.730
the error is predicted to
be at about .06 seconds.

87
00:04:42.730 --> 00:04:45.870
By the end of the year, it'll be
about a quarter of a second.

88
00:04:45.870 --> 00:04:48.940
I've written some code that will keep
checking the clocks and automatically

89
00:04:48.940 --> 00:04:51.330
update the title of this video as we go.

90
00:04:51.330 --> 00:04:54.630
At least until the code breaks
and I can't be bothered to fix it anymore.

91
00:04:54.630 --> 00:04:57.760
The error could get all the way
to .9 seconds

92
00:04:57.760 --> 00:05:00.910
before a leap second
arrives to correct it.

93
00:05:00.910 --> 00:05:04.480
But it's not like phones, and computers
and stock exchanges here in Denmark

94
00:05:04.480 --> 00:05:08.020
follow Danish law. They don't
pay attention to the stars.

95
00:05:08.020 --> 00:05:13.190
They all just use UTC instead,
and ignore the outdated legislation.

96
00:05:13.190 --> 00:05:14.880
So does it matter?

97
00:05:14.880 --> 00:05:17.450
- I think that laws should in general

98
00:05:17.450 --> 00:05:20.520
be in accordance with reality [laughs]

99
00:05:20.520 --> 00:05:22.290
and if not you should at least

100
00:05:22.290 --> 00:05:25.240
decide that we want to
keep it this way actively.

101
00:05:25.240 --> 00:05:28.340
Denmark does not have any official
time laboratory,

102
00:05:28.340 --> 00:05:32.000
so we rely on the time services
from neighbouring countries.

103
00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:36.060
This may put us at a disadvantage
compared to other countries.

104
00:05:36.060 --> 00:05:37.770
- If everyone agrees to ignore a law,

105
00:05:37.770 --> 00:05:39.980
and the government doesn't care
to enforce it, that's fine.

106
00:05:39.980 --> 00:05:43.200
As long as the government
keeps deciding not to enforce that law

107
00:05:43.200 --> 00:05:44.710
and also to ignore the hypocrisy

108
00:05:44.710 --> 00:05:47.630
that government is ignoring its own laws.

109
00:05:47.630 --> 00:05:50.240
Fixing that shouldn't be the highest thing on the priority list,

110
00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:53.220
but it'd be nice to do it at some point.

111
00:05:53.220 --> 00:05:59.070
After all the United States moved to UTC
in 2007 with the America COMPETES Act.

112
00:05:59.070 --> 00:06:00.960
And the UK...

113
00:06:02.060 --> 00:06:04.060
Ah. Er. [clears throat]

114
00:06:05.460 --> 00:06:07.780
Y'know, it's probably not a good time

115
00:06:07.780 --> 00:06:10.220
to bother the British
government right now.

116
00:06:10.220 --> 00:06:11.820
It can wait.

117
00:06:11.820 --> 00:06:12.960
We've got time.