[LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

Zefram zefram at fysh.org
Sat Sep 13 15:45:09 EDT 2008


David Malone wrote:

>100ks is almost 28 hours. I don't know for certain, but I suspect

>a flight accross 4 hours is enough to jetlag some people. That

>probably means it's a little too long to use as a day.


The problem there is in suddenly being 4 hours out of synch with the
sun, and having to shift phase. Phase shifting is difficult. I think
people are much more flexible about diurnal frequency than you think,
especially if the appropriate cues are around to support it.

There's some fairly well-known research to the effect that the human
biological clock actually has a natural period of 26 hours or so,
and its only our exposure to planetary rotation that keeps us on a 24
hour cycle. I've previously mentioned on this list that my personal
free-running diurnal cycle is 40 hours, empirically determined when I
was an undergrad and had no daily responsibilities.

-zefram


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