Our time is shaped in various ways by the spinning of events such as the Earth’s rotation around the Sun, or the shift workers shifting between days and the nights. Some of them happen every day while others are more irregular and less predictable.
The majority of people are aware that the Earth revolves all day long around the Sun. What is less well known is the speed at which the Earth rotates may vary which can make a day appear longer or shorter than one would expect. This is why nuclear clocks which maintain a standard time must be regularly adjusted by adding or subtracting seconds. This is referred to as leap seconds.
Precession is a regular rotating event. It is the circular wobble of the Earth’s axis, similar to a spinning toy top that is slightly off-center. This Axial shift in relation to fixed stars (inertial spaces) has an estimated duration of 25,771.5. It is responsible for a myriad of weather patterns such as the alternating directions between cyclones on the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Scientists have also noticed that the speed of Earth rotation slows over time, causing the solar day to become longer. On June 29th the world added an extra leap second to the atomic clocks to better align them with the axis of the Earth. Although the addition of a second may seem small but it can have significant implications for companies that depend on changing schedules. For example multinational companies that rely on an international workforce, fumbling through static spreadsheets and wiki pages to manage changing call schedules could be costly in terms of revenue and reputation. This is the reason why more companies are switching to on-call software to minimize interruptions in service, manage transfer coverage, and ensure transparency for employees.
