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Holidays 2023

December 18, 2023

Tikalon is on a year-end holiday. The next article will be posted on Monday, January 5, 2024.

A baryon decuplet Chtistmas tree

A baryon decuplet Christmas tree.

The Ω- was discovered at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1964 as a consequence of the symmetry of baryons.

This discovery confirmed the quark model that proposed the classification of hadrons through a symmetry named SU(3).

(Animated GIF created using Inkscape and the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). Click for larger static image.)


Our upcoming year, 2024, is a leap year containing the extra day, February 29, 2024. Such days are added to keep the calendar mostly synchronized with the astronomical year and seasonal year. It would not be good to really have Christmas in July, although global warming might soon make it seem that way.

While leap year days do an excellent job at such synchronization, the last day of some years contains a leap second for more precision. The Earth's rotational rate varies slightly because of changes in the Earth, itself, but this change cannot be predicted.[1] The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), decides about mid-year of each year whether to add a leap second at year's end, and the IERS has decided that there will be no leap second in 2023.[2]

References:

  1. Leap Seconds FAQs, Time and Frequency Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
  2. Leap Second Announcement, IERS Rapid Service/Prediction Center, U.S. Naval Observatory