Part of this thread has gone OT. I don't think this is the right list to be discussing this. the Leap Second Discussion List <leaps...@leapsecond.com> is available for exactly this debate.
However, that said, here's my 2 cents. As has been mentioned, UTC with leaps seconds, has been defined to track UT1 and thus solar time. The reason why it hasn't been fiddled with for a while, is the very fact that it tracks Solar time, and has become the basis of legal times globally. Many people, including up to now a majority of those voting at ITU-R, consider it essential that the legal time scale should represent human experience and rhythms, and not machine ticks. The lobby for change is essentially basing its arguments on experiences of bad engineering and sloppy systems design. The argument being that it would cost less to ignore leap seconds. For me, there is no reason that we cannot keep UTC with leap seconds, for 2 or 3 hundred years if necessary, while a replacement is designed which will keep the solar link. However we need not wait that long as VLBA measurements of variations in the earths rotation are approaching real time ( already < hourly IIRC ). So it would be simple to include corrections, in terms of a frequency adjustment, in the GPS stream ( space is available). That correction could then be exploited by next gen GPS receivers and client software ( NTP). Those who got this far before pressing delete, will have noted that it requires a change in the definition of UTC, to abandon the link between the SI second and legal time. Why not? SI secs would still be available from the GPS stream. See you on the leapsecs list maybe. Mike Le 25 juin 2014 à 11:31, Miroslav Lichvar a écrit : > On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 06:13:17PM -0500, Mike S wrote: >> On 6/24/2014 5:59 AM, Miroslav Lichvar wrote: >>> To me, it seems the reasonable thing to do would be to decouple UTC and >>> UT1 completely and make the adjustment at a higher level like >>> timezones if necessary. >> >> You're doing it wrong. If you don't want leap seconds, use a timescale which >> doesn't have them (e.g. TAI, GPS). UTC was created to closely track Sol. >> Decoupling that breaks its purpose, and the promise made when it took over >> from GMT. > > Yes, but to me it looks like redefining UTC to not track solar time > anymore is easier than converting everyone and everything to keep time > in TAI. > > -- > Miroslav Lichvar > _______________________________________________ > questions mailing list > questions@lists.ntp.org > http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions _______________________________________________ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions
