Has Stuart Hameroff Explicated a Way Out of Death?

This is the question that occurs on viewing the excellent documentary (H2 channel), 'Science and the Soul' and specifically the section dealing with anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff , who began his unusual research by asking: "What happens to people when put under via anaesthesia?"

He notes, for example, that there is no passage of time, nor does one dream during this peculiar state in which key cognitive functions appear to be suspended. I can vouch for that having experienced both aspects while having a tonsillectomy in 1977. One minute I was counting backwards from 100, and then the next I was awake (okay, almost ..) and nurses were pulling a tube from my throat as I gagged. 'Where did I 'go?' - to use Hameroff's phrase. Who knows?

Anyway, 35 years of anaesthetizing patients and seeing the same results over and over led Hameroff to postulate that small structures in the brain called "microtubules" are at the root of apparent "escaped" consciousness and that they hold the key to what happens. He also surmises, in the same documentary, that at putative death (or even "near death") essential energy associated with the microtubules disperses out from the brain and becomes "entangled" in a larger, undifferentiated whole.

If the person returns then those earlier dispersed, energy- entangled wave forms are "sucked back"  into the body and the person's consciousness is again localized. Hameroff cites certain aspects of quantum mechanics to explain his reasoning though, he leaves some ends open.

In the brain, information persists through a phenomenon called quantum coherence. This means that a multitude of quantum wave states are stored in a multitude of microtubules. Precisely how this is done remains a topic on the frontier of current research, but the point is that if one is aware and conscious there is a high degree of locality. When one dies, those wave states presumably evacuate and one's consciousness enters the domain of non-locality.

Hameroff's basic argument then, is that death doesn't mean the final termination of consciousness, so much as the end of its localization. If that is so, you cease to be a "person" or an individual identity and instead merge with other dispersed quantum wave forms (I have called them "B-waves" or de Broglie waves) to enter an "oceanic" state.

Physicist David Bohm, in his superb book 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order', refers to this oceanic state as the "implicate order" and its being a higher dimensional reality into which we are subsumed. Another term he used is the  "Holomovement". Another term often used is "the Dirac Ether". The relation of previously (living- biological) individualities to the Dirac Ether might be depicted as I show below:

INDIVIDUALITY:

___Ç___Ç___Ç___Ç___Ç___  

DIRAC ENERGY SEA (IMPLICATE ORDER)

This then gives a nice analogy, say between the ocean and individual waves. The “ripples” on this Dirac sea are the distinct material forms or assorted biological individualities perceived as separate entities in the universe - because (in our explicate order) we are generally unaware of the implicate order. Nonetheless, the remarkable insight is that within this order separate forms (individualities) emerge as purely illusory. By analogy, the separate waves one sees on the ocean surface are illusions - at least in the sense they cannot be removed and placed on the beach one by one for inspection! So also, material forms cannot be abstracted from the energy background of the Dirac Ether. We are all basically hostage to separable perception and locality.

An interesting aspect of the above is that people, live current manifestations of individuality, don't have to die in order to enter the Dirac Sea. They can also attain this nonlocal entry temporarily via meditation. In an interview with Renee Weber (The Holographic Universe, p. 213) , Bohm himself (before his death) acknowledged the feasibility, noting (ibid.)

"Perhaps meditation will lead you deep into this ocean of physical and mental energy which is universal."

From this remark, quantum physicist Bohm (see also his great book 'Quantum Theory', Dover, 1951) regards meditation as a possible "channel" by which the individual mind can access the Dirac Ether. I have dealt with similar conjectures before, in terms of the 'quantum potential".

In general, V_Q= { - ħ²/ 2m}  [Ñ R]² / R          

Where ħ is the Planck constant of action h divided by 2π , m is the mass, and R a phase amplitude. Assume the total set of one's thoughts contains waves of frequencies ranging from f' (highest) to f, then the quantum potential ( V_Q) can be expressed:

V_Q = h(f' - f), where h is Planck's constant.

Thus, V_Q has units of energy as the other potential functions in physics, e.g. gravitational and electrostatic. On average, the greater the number of possible states, the greater the difference (f' - f) and the greater the quantum potential.

Of course, in a real human brain, we have a "many-particle" field (especially since we're looking at neuronal complexes) so that the quantum potential must be taken over a sum such that:

V_Q=  { - ħ²/ 2m}  å _i  [Ñ R_i]² / R

The velocity of an individual B-wave is expressed by:

v(B)= Ñ S/ m

Where m is the mass of the particle associated with the B-wave, and S is a phase function obtained by using:

U = R exp( iS/ħ)

The last discloses the "phase-locking mechanism" that Hameroff believes operates for a localized consciousness - but which he describes as a "resonance with the EEG". The point is we have the basis for a bifurcation between localized waves in the microtubules, and those dispersed outside (for which we have non-locality and the phase exponential approaching infinity.

As I said before (in other blog posts) this isn't really any kind of recognizable "after life". Indeed, it is impossible to even remotely describe what a nonlocal consciousness might perceive, if it perceives at all. It also leaves a decided negative slant on the question of preserving any sense of self. How can one, if the "self" is no longer separable? But it might be at least one step removed from the atheist's state of total obliteration and nothingness.

Let's Not Jump the Gun with the Higgs!

CERN physicists in a webcast tried to share their excitement with colleagues around the world, on their putative discovery of the Higgs. Well, can you blame them for being somewhat impatient? We're talking about a search lasting decades that's likely been one of the costliest in the history of science. We're talking of a location with its Large Hadron Collider, that was set up as THE place to dig out the Higgs boson - especially after the Superconducting Supercollider in the U.S. fell through due to lack of funding. One of the sorriest retrenchments in our history, followed by the retreat from space (and please don't get me going on the so-called "private sector" space exploits!)

Anyway, Dr. Rolf Heuer, director general of CERN, while referring to the new discovery as "a historic milestone" was nevertheless cautious in asserting that it's too soon to know for sure if the new particle (coming in at 125 billion electron volts) is actually the long sought particle. I totally agree and would suggest hypers, humpers and pumpers pipe down until further analyses are made. To be blunt, it's way too soon to be saying definitiely that THE Higgs has been found. (People may still recall how too many jumped the gun last year on the discovery of "superluminal neutrinos")

To fix ideas here, the subatomic particles are basically classified into two groups according to their "spin" - see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/07/more-quantum-mechanics-electron-spin.html

as either FERMIONS (example: the electron) or BOSONS. The Fermions are called so because they obey Fermi- Dirac statistics, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%E2%80%93Dirac_statistics

while the BOSONS (for example the photon, and Higgs boson) obey Bose-Einstein statistics: E.g.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statistics

Thus, these "statistics" are critical in basically determining, or rather predicting, the extent of occupancy of the particular species of particle with reference to the energy state of the particle.

The existence of the Higgs itself is tied to the so-called "Standard Model", according to which the Higgs is the only visible (and accessible) manifestation of an invisible field called the "Higgs field".   The so-called 'Standard Model' is generally defined as the symmetry: SU(3) x SU(2) X U(1)

where each of the factors defines a matrix. (Readers can review any of the past blogs on matrices, including unitary or posed as groups. See, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/05/looking-at-matrix-groups.html. )Spontaneous symmetry breaking would therefore resolve this combination into constituent parts, e.g.:

SU(3) associated with the 'color force' of quarks

SU(2) x U(1) associated with the electro-weak force

One possible symmetry breaking (quark -boson format) is:

SU(3) x SU(2) X U(1) -> SU(3) + SU(2) x U(1)

which would occur at a particular ambient temperature (T_qb) for the universe at some epoch (E_qb) in the past. In the foregoing, the synthesis of SU(2) and U(1) into the locally gauge invariant electro-weak theory requires a mechanism which confers mass to three vector bosons while leaving the photon massless. This 'mass-giving' mechanism is called the Higgs Field or Higgs mechanism. It demands the existence of one or more massive, spin-0 bosons otherwise called Higgs bosons.

The problem? The culmination of analyses of over 800 trillion proton-proton collisions over the past 2 years have generated a quandary. When the physicists are buttonholed they admit they know little. The CERN results are mostly based on measurements of two or three of the dozen different ways, or “channels,” by which a Higgs boson could be produced and then decay. Worse, there are hints that some of the channels are overproducing the Higgs while others might be underproducing.

The upshot? There may not be ONE Higgs here, but two or three. Much like the case of the neutrino, which was once believed to be one entity only, but we now know is THREE: the electron neutrino, the tau neutrino and the muon neutrino, see e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/06/solving-neutrino-puzzleand-matter.html

All we can say now is stay tuned!

Shameless Casting of Blame by Ignorant Local Wingnuts

"The private sector is supposed to do more than the federal and state government? What planet are you libertarians living on? How is it profitable for a private business to lift a finger to help someone out? The ONLY reason the private sector exists is to make as much money as possible... Not help people. The ONLY exception to this is non-profit entities- and are you suggesting people seek disaster funds from them? Their coffers would be overwhelmed in an hour. I can just picture evacuees going to their local business store to ask for free stuff because they were fire victims- they'd be laughed out of the place!”

- Reader response to recent Gazette 'Our View' on Preference for Private Sector Fire Response

Let's cut to the chase: Without a concerted, pooled federal response, marshalling teams of trained fire fighters as well as an aerial assault using C-130s dropping tons of slurry, Colorado Springs - all of it- might well have burned to the ground. It was that rapid response (within two days of the start of the Waldo Canyon fire) and within a day of the request for aid, that teams arrived and began the fight that has now contained the Waldo monster by 80%.

You'd think the local wingnuts and Libertarians would be on bended knee giving praise to the feds, but instead they' re doing anything but - continuing to act like spoilt ingrates that need a board taken to their collective backsides.

Let's leave out for now the disgusting one-sided "polls" mounted by the local Libbie rag (the Gazette) which results were posted in Monday's ( Colorado Springs Gazette, p. A12) paper, showing:

- 56% gave the federal response to fighting the fires as an 'F'

- 14% gave the federal response a D.

That is 70 percent of Gazelle respondents giving a grade of D or below! I'd earlier blogged about these local yahoos and miscreants blaming the feds for "arriving too slowly":

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/06/springs-wingnuts-explain-reasons-for.html

when the law ('Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 2007') clearly stipulates that:  "The intent of the Stafford Act is that Federal assistance be supplemental to local, state, and private relief organizations. Nevertheless, it is not neessary for the community to exhaust its resources before it requests Federal assistance"

Yet the local dunderheads exactly misconstrued the above law, believing they had to allow private resources to be exhausted before going to the feds. (A misperception I lay at the  feet of their core aversion to ANY federal aid, hence engendering a rationalized delay....perhaps to be able to blame the same feds for lack of alacrity later). Indeed, according to our Reep Rep Doug Lamborn:

"What Congress has decided previously is that in a case like this the private sector has to deplete its resources before federal assets can be brought to bear.""

Instead of owning up to their misconstrual  and misreading of the law, they continue to blame the Feds for "allowing several C-130s to sit idle for days" and then accusing them of "following protocol". Meanwhile, in today's Opinion, the local rag continues its bullshit with the header:

'Feds Have Bungled Fire Fighting Plan'

Accusing Obama and the feds of a "lack of dedication to controlling fire on its land was further exposed on Sunday when the Denver Post published a story about a bold strategy to battle wildfires."

These nutsos at the Gazelle (my mock term for them) then go on to assert that the Post "quotes the director of resources of the Government Accountability Office explaining the importance of Fire Program analysis. The GAO has warned Congress, in reports and hearings, that federal firefighting agencies were failing to implement the new technology."

Any why the fuck do you think THAT is, you dumb assholes? It's because the austerity-deficit hawk  fetishists - and Tea Baggers in the HOUSE (the Republican -controlled HOUSE) have refused to increase the necessary budgets to provide for the implementation of said technology! In other words, you're bitching about your own kindred assholes!  But rather than be direct and honest, the Gazelle conflates all of the feds under the single term "Congress" as opposed to further differentiation that would expose THEIR limited government side as the culprits.

And, for a reminder, let us recall Mitt Romney's OWN words  castigating Obama, while echoing the Tea Bagger clique he so desperately needs to win:

"He wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers."

And, of course, new fire fighting  implementation technologies are useless without more firemen! (Whether to fight urban fires or wildfires). Hence, knowing this, the Reep House elected to reject the new technology implementation budgets since with that move the need to hire more fire fighters (as well as replace worn and aging air craft for aerial firefighting) would be obviated. No new money need be spent.

But the choicest canard and the item to which the reader responded (top of blog-quote from online comments) was an opinion rendered a few days ago when the editor (Wayne Laugesen):

"How we recover from Waldo will define this community. Local, state and federal governments are doing their share, but they have limitations. The private sector has far fewer limitations and should shoulder the bulk of our community’s recovery efforts. No able-bodied person among us lives above or beneath the need to assist the community in getting back on its feet. Each of us has something we can give".

Well, at least in this piece Laugesen got it right that the feds were "doing their share". But then he goes on to claim the private sector "has far fewer limitations". Really? Well, truth be told you will wait until Hell freezes over for any general relief using major pooled efforts-resources from them, as the reader opined. Their byword is PROFIT and hence, using their private resources for rebuilding etc. will only reduce their profits, so reduce any willingness to assist. (As opposed to existing non-profits, e.g. 'Care & Share',  which can help but whose resources are limited).

As for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)  averring they "will not make anyone whole" - referring to the owners of the 350 -odd homes lost in Mountain Shadows' upscale neighborhood, that is par for the course. When my folks' ($100,000) home in Port Charlotte, FLA sustained major damage from Hurricane Charlie in 2004, FEMA barely covered one half of the expenses. Insurance did pay the balance but then the rates were jacked up three times higher the following year. This is one reason Port Charlotte remains a place full of abandoned homes to this day, as I learned when I returned for my dad's funeral in July, 2009.

Mountain Shadows'  residents have a bigger 'mountain' to climb since their homes average $450,000 - $500,000 each and hence rebuilding costs will be a lot more than in Florida for that hurricane. Estimates now run to $100 million. One could even ask (being politically incorrect here) about the advisability of rebuilding in an area which is now known to be fire prone. Doubtless, the insurance companies will also reckon that question into the mix when the new rates are issued for homeowners there, even those who didn't lose homes (the same way new rates were jacked up for everyone in my folks' neighborhood - and one reason they had no choice other than to move to a retirement complex.)

Time will tell, but time so far has shown much of the limited government brigade in the Springs to be unrepentant, shameless ingrates...as well as assholes. That's my opinion....and you're right, I could be in a better mood, but am not!

NOT the News I wanted to hear!

Four days before my 66th birthday, the news I received this morning was nowhere near what I wanted to hear. At 8.45 a.m. it was my doctor's voice, mellow but firm: "I'm afraid I have bad news for you: the free psa test you took last week came back with a 5.1% reading......"   Of course, after two high total psa test results I'd been pinning my hopes on the free psa % (or % fpsa)  to be my deliverance.  (If the value came back 25% or more I could justifiaby and rationally forego a biopsy given that 92% of men in that category had BPH or benign prostate hypertrophy - not cancer. To me it was great odds to avoid the possible complications of a biopsy - see below).

It became possible about five years ago to measure the different forms in which PSA is found in the blood, either free (fPSA) or bound to serum proteinase inhibitors (complexed PSA; cPSA). It was observed that these molecular forms occur in different proportions in benign prostatic hypertrophy and prostate cancer. Patients with prostate cancer show a lower proportion of fPSA, while those with BPH have a higher percentage. Assays were developed to measure fPSA, and researchers set up prospective clinical trials. Even before results were in, many predicted that determination of percent fPSA (%fPSA) would add value to PSA screening.

Summing up results of the clinical studies with %f PSA, Milenko Tanasijevic, MD, associate director of Clinical Laboratories, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, averred, "We believe that there is sufficient evidence showing the clinical usefulness of percent free PSA in clinical practice, especially for patients in whom total PSA is between 4 and 10 and who have a negative DRE."

The relative risks of prostate cancer given by the % fpsa results are well known, and my meager 5.1%  (total psa reading of 6.1 at last testing 2 weeks ago) fell into the category of men with more than a 60% probability of having cancer, as opposed to benign prostate hypertrophy.

Anyway as she rambled on, informing what the research showed on cancer probability for my % f psa  my mind had by then blanked out. In any case I already knew it and the odds.

By the end of her message she flatly told me there could be no more excuses or other tests, and she was referring me to a urologist for a prostate biopsy. Of course, given the choice between that and two root canals I would likely take the latter any day. A prostate biopsy meanwhile is no sport with more than 12- 80mm long needles inserted one by one at a time into one of the most sensitive regions of the body to snatch (in turns)  1/2" sections from differing positions and then do it again. Some have colorfuly referred to it as "being sodomized by knitting needles".

One Brit who faced it wrote on his blog some years ago:

"All men everywhere should demand sedation during a Prostate Biopsy. Accept no less. Demand sedation -- unless you like knitting needles being inserted where the sun don’t shine -- and 15 samples (or more!) being extracted by a circle of eleven needles, from a place that does not usually have needles pricking it & poking it.

 I think what makes me most furious is that in this day & age of instantaneous information available on the internet, the “sedation” option for a Prostrate biopsy is almost not there.
 Almost not there? Far into one article the writer says, in a very vague way, “general anesthesia helps….but your insurance company might refuse to pay.’ Saying “general anesthesia helps’ sounds like saying that an aspirin might help a headache. No, no, no. General anesthesia obliterates all pain at time of contact (later you will feel some soreness). General anesthesia doesn’t just help, it annihilates all memory of the pain.

In Modern Times there should be an addition to the Doctor’s Motto: “If at all possible, inflict no pain,” should be added to “Above all do no harm.’


I really am furious at the state of affairs. Everyone needs to know that in the case of a Prostate biopsy (a very-very common procedure for older men), “There is no reason for pain in a modern, well equipped room.’"


 I definitely will be taking this guy up on his advice and insisting on sedation, and whoever the urologist is may regard me as "wimp", "wuss" or whatever, but hell - if you're going to have sedation for a colonoscopy why not for something 100 times more invasive!

The pain, of course, is not the worst aspect - another is the possibility of complications which I covered in an earlier blog. SO imagine my freak out when I also pulled up a comprehensive report out of Johns Hopkins Hospital, published in The Journal of Urology in 2011, noting all the hospitalizations for infections (an increase of ~ 7%) reported  within 1 month for Medicare patients undergoing biopsy since 2000.  (This compares with a hospitalization rate of 0.5% during the same 1 month post -biopsy period in the 90s). You can read much more on their findings here:

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/johns_hopkins_study_reveals_significant_rise_in_prostate_biopsy_complications_and_high_post_procedure_hospitalization_rate


Excerpt:

"Hopkins researchers have found a significant rise in serious complications requiring hospitalization. The researchers found that this common outpatient procedure, used to diagnose prostate cancer, was associated with a 6.9 percent rate of hospitalization within 30 days of biopsy compared to a 2.9 percent hospitalization rate among a control group of men who did not have a prostate biopsy. The study, which will be published in the November 2011 issue of The Journal of Urology, was posted early online.


The researchers emphasize that this new data should serve as a reminder to physicians to carefully weigh the risks and benefits of biopsy for individual patients and take all precautions to prevent infections and other complications.

The Johns Hopkins team’s findings are the result of the largest analysis ever performed of Medicare records of American men age 65 and older who underwent prostate biopsies in the last two decades. They found that having a prostate biopsy makes patients more than twice as likely to need hospitalization in the immediate post-procedure period. Those hospitalized had a range of complications, such as bleeding and infection, as well as flare-ups of underlying medical conditions, such as heart failure or breathing disorders."

Where will this lead and where will it go? I can't say for now, but will keep blogging as long as I can and keep readers appraised. My first visit with the specialist is unlikely to be before next Wednesday and the biopsy will not likely be before the following week - Wednesday or Thursday. I keep hoping for the best including that no cancer will be found.

Meanwhile, I am weighing treatment options!

Get set for the possibility of another atheist on a cancer ward!

Students Earmarked to Get Screwed By 'Automatic' Loan Hike Next Year

We all mostly know why so many students are struggling under a mountain of college loan debt: Between 1982 and 2007, tuition and fees increase 439% while the median middle class family income rose 147%. This according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Meanwhile, thanks to state budget cuts to fund higher education, leaving public universities to jack up their tuition on their own-  the price of in-state tuition at the typical public university has increased more than 5 percent annually in the past ten years. And it jumped 15% between a 2008 and 2010 alone.

No wonder so many recent college grads, as well as current students are barely treading water. Many sincerely believed they'd catch a break as congress recently came into session before the 4th of July recess, to pass legislation that would keep the interest on new Stafford loans at 3.4% instead of spiking to 6.8% That difference is estimated to save some 7.4 million students an average of $1,000 each over the next year.

The problem is that this relief actually ENDS after only one year. As noted in The Sunday Denver Post ('Student Loan Relief Only Temporary', July 1, p. 13A) students will get relief for a year but come next summer those interest rates will automatically jack up to 6.8%. Congress critters, mainly Reeps, weren't apologetic, insisting this wasn't their doing but rather that "lawmakers approved the automatic rate increase when they signed off in a series of reductions 5 years ago."  Really? So why didn't this news circulate more widely instead of now blind siding millions? What gives?

Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust - quoted in the article - says:

"Congress aggravates everybody, creates lots of anxiety out there and essentially gives us a one-year solution,"

Well, join the rest of us, Kati....who currently get 1 year solutions for Medicare doc fixes (we have to wait each year to see if congress will cut Medicare payments to doctors by 20%, and then hope we don't get ditched), and AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) "fixes" - to see when tax time comes if we have to pay 2.5 times more taxes under a diferent schedule because congress never did an AMT patch.

This is now how congress operates: keeping citizens on tenterhooks year after year, so they can never - unless they're super rich or part of the one percent - feel financially secure. But if you think it's bad and uncertain now, wait until ol' Mitt gets elected and we have to have added uncertainty when yearly "fixes" must be voted on for Romney's post-Obama healthcare plan. Fixes including: who will make the cut for avoiding the pre-existing conditions acceptance threshold, or the cut for maximal insurance costs paid over a lifetime.

Leap Second Causes Major Hiccups Globally

Who'd have thought that adding one little itty, bitty second  (see previous blog also) would create so much relative consternation and confusion globally? Well, evidently, our current networked computers and  GPS-based system (what will happen when one or more of those satellites ceases operation?) just couldn't handle it. Examples? Only yesterday did we learn that sites such as Reddit, Netflix, Gawker, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Yelp crashed after the leap second was added in order to compensate for the Earth's non-secular change slowdown (see last blog for details).

Reddit announced on Twitter that the added second was causing problems with its Java, and meanwhile Gawker's entire website was down for about 45 minutes. Aggregator, Stumbleupon and review website Yelp also reported problems while harried travellers lost hours as the incremental time change left passengers stranded all across the world.

Up to 50 Qantas flights were delayed by a system glitch with global reservation software 'Amadeus,' which left the airline unable to check in passengers. (Amadeus is the global program that monitors flight weight control, inventory and seat bookings.) This left thousands of passengers from the UK to Australia in turmoil. According to Qantas spokeswoman Lauren Blank :

""Amadeus had a global outage which affects all clients worldwide,"

subsequently conceding the leap second was the reason. Not mentioned, but reported by Qantas passengers were delays created by the inevitable backlog. Tweets from assorted Aussie airports by travelers suffering, reported "big queues and chaos at Adelaide airport as the check-in crashed."

The leap second was added to electronic clocks at midnight universal time on Saturday, with atomic clocks reading 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds before then moving on to Greenwich Mean Time. (The last leap seconds were added in 2008, 2005 and 1998.) Could the tail end addition (instead of doing it say at midday Greenwich time) have been the cause? Maybe. But without further analysis it's difficult to say exactly what the difference might have been.

What we do know is that any adjustments to atomic clocks are more than a technical curiosity.  A collection of these hyper-accurate devices is used to set co-ordinated universal time (via corrections to the coefiicents 'a' and 'b' - see prior blog), which governs time standards on the internet, satellite navigation, banking computer networks and international air traffic systems. Hence, it is logical that even a tiny change in the adjustment coefficients can wreak havoc if networked systems are overly dependent on them.

Naturally, in the wake of these mishaps, we've heard calls to abandon leap seconds.  But that's easier said than done. What are you going to do instead? Just let the time get more and more out of step with the Earth's rotational timing?  Indeed,  a meeting of the International Telecommunications Union, the UN agency responsible for international communications standards, failed to reach a consensus in January. This is because this issue is complicated and can only be resolved by attention to multiple inputs.

Sure, opponents want a simpler system that avoids the costs (and margins for error)  in making manual changes to thousands of computer networks. But as yet, no one has arrived at any feasible alternative which works as efficiently. Perhaps people just need to get a grip and understand that such an overly intermeshed world of  electronic telecommunications will always be hostage to natural processes that either depart from its expected timing precision (like our slowing Earth) - or can produce effects to disrupt that precision, like CMEs. See, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/06/cme-that-you-dont-want-to-see.html

I personally think these worriers have bigger 'fish to fry': namely finding a way to get the Repugs to stretch the needed budgets to replace the aging GPS satellites once they cease operation (which may be within the next ten years). THEN, you will see big time disruptions that'll make those caused by the leap second look like a 'sneeze' compared to pneumonic plague.

Where Did That Extra Second Come From?

As most readers are probably aware, yesterday (Saturday) featured 86, 401 seconds rather than the usual 86, 400. One leap second was added to compensate for a slowing Earth rotation (actually - if factored in from 1972, 24 full seconds slower than at that time). A cutesy explanation (on ABC News) last night was that "just as humans slow down when they age so has the Earth." Well, yes...and no.

The actual physical reason has less to do with aging per se and more to do with what we call "tidal friction" resulting from the Moon's cumulative gravitational effects (part of which causes our spring and neap tides as well as regular tides on Earth). Over time those gravitational effects add up....and a leap second must be added to correct it.

Thus did the concept of Ephemeris time (ET) enter the picture and ET thereby became part of the lexicon of astronomers, and integrated within the specialized sub-discipline of astrometry. The job of astrometry is to keep careful quantitative track of any changes that would lead to time corrections, specially related to ET. This isn't so stirring an idea now, but a couple of centuries ago it was almost a given that the Earth's period of rotation about its axis was constant. (Apart from a slow secular increase due to tidal friction). 

Note that "secular changes" are essentially non-reversible, and hence proportional to time passed.

Meanwhile, the value of ET at a given instant is reckoned by extremely accurate observations of sudden variations in the longtiudes of Sun, Moon and planets which of course emanate from variations in Earth's rate of rotation. Hence, if I detect a rather sudden "jump" in the Sun's (heliographic) longitude - say during lengthy observations of a sunspot group, I can tie that in to variation in Earth's rotation. (Generally, however, such changes wouldn't occur that fast.)

To get into the nitty gritty, Simon Newcomb (1895) originally provided us with the detailed expression for the longitude of the Sun (cf. 'Spherical and Practical Astronomy Applied to Geodesy', p. 168):

L= 279 deg 41'48."04 + 129, 602, 768."13 t_e  + 1."089 t_e^2

where t_e is the length of the tropical century from the standard epoch. (Recall the 'tropical year' is the time taken by the fictitious Sun to make one passage between the mean Vernal equinox. Hence, a tropical century refers to 100 such passages.)

Now, differentiating the preceding with respect to time t_e,  the instantaneous rate of change of L per second of ET is obtained, viz.

dL/ dt_e  = 0."0410686389744 + 6."9017 x 10^-10t_e

The last factor featuring the 10 raised to the negative 10 power is an important marker. It allows us to estimate the frequency at which time corrections, say to Earth's rotation, need to be made. Thus, the equation shows us that to define Ephemeris time correctly to 1 part in 10^10 (or one part in ten billion) observations of the Moon are required over at least 5 years.

Another quantity that makes its way into such computations is the Right Ascension of the fictitious mean Sun;

RA = 18 h 38 m 45.s 836  = 8, 640, 184.s 542 t_e  =0.s 0929 t_e^2

What exactly is the fictitious mean Sun? What, for that matter, is the fictitious Sun (referenced earlier in connection with the tropical year, and century)? Basically, the former is that fictitious entity which is presumed to travel always at a uniform rate every hour and every day. This fictional creation enables us to fabricate "time zones" based on the fiction that the Earth turns uniformly through 360 degrees every 24 hours, hence through 15 degrees every hour. Hence, we set out longitude markers to reference the mean time for all locations, say within 15 degrees of longitude.

Hence, in regular standard time (not 'daylight saving') one has the time zone for the Greenwich meridian registering say 12 noon, then at a longitude of 15 deg W. the time is one hour earlier, and at 30 W two hours earlier, and so forth. All locations within the time zone agree (with few exceptions) to keep the same time.

By contrast, the fictititous Sun is not so regularized so its motion is erratic. This is also referenced to what we call "apparent solar time" or "sundial time".  Based on comparisons of the two, one can then compute what is called the "equation of time", see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/tackling-simple-astronmoyh-problems.html

Now, if we reckon Ephemeris time into the context of the "fictitious Suns" we will be using two key hour angles: h (the hour angle of the fictitious mean Sun) and h' (the ephemeris hour angle of the fictitious mean Sun. Based on this, Ephemeris time (ET) would be expressed:

ET = h + 12h

While the equation of time (EQN T) is:

EQN T =   h"   -  h'

where h" is the hour angle of the fictititous Sun.(Those who'd like to review hour angles and how to work them out can consult two earlier blogs:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/03/more-spherical-astronomy.html

and

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/03/solutions-to-spherical-astronomy.html

I will also give here, without derivation (though I welcome energized readers attempting it using material from prior blogs) the relation between the corrected time delta T, Ephemeris time and Universal Time (UT):

delta T = ET - UT

Generally, delta T is computed - or at least used to be before the era of atomic clocks - through inverse interpolation in the ephemeris of the Sun, Moon & planets...and deducting the recorded UT time of observation. (Note: An 'Ephemeris' is a manual giving all the changing positions correlated with times, dates for celestial objects).

In the modern atomic clock -time epoch, things are (fortunately!) much more streamlined and we have powerful Cray and other supercomputers to boot. Basically, one associates the atomic time (AT) and Ephemeris time (ET) via the generic expression:

AT - ET = a + bt  + ct^2

where t denotes the time from the epoch when AT = ET + a

Hence, the coefficient 'a' determines the epoch of atomic time in relation to Ephemeris time. The coefficient 'b' is the division ratio adopted for the atomic resonator (as we know, different atomic clocks, e.g. cesium , quartz etc. have different frequencies, hence differing resonator rates). Finally, coefficient c is a cosmic constant which value may be 0 or more likely on the order of 0.s001 per year.

As we can see from the above considerations, for the most recent leap second correction:

ET - UT = 1 s  =  AT  - ET

Just be glad you only have to savor that extra second of time, not figure out when exactly you have to add it!