Re: [LEAPSECS] The man in the moon's too slow

2015-01-23 Thread Rob Seaman
RR?

 On Jan 23, 2015, at 2:43 PM, Steffen Nurpmeso sdao...@yandex.com wrote:
 
 Rob Seaman sea...@noao.edu wrote:
 |On Jan 23, 2015, at 5:33 AM, Steffen Nurpmeso sdao...@yandex.com wrote:
 
 | This is logical.  I indeed have *no* idea on what can happen, \
 | which is one of the reasons that i am on this list, because \
 | so many specialists from many different specialist fields \
 | can (or could) show up.  For example i didn't know that \
 | even snow storms have a measurable effect on earth rotation.
 |
 |It's a question of scale.  A snow storm (even Snowpiercer) \
 |will not trigger a negative leap second.  Maybe if you ran \
 |the Snowpiercer train in reverse?
 
 I haven't seen that film.  (And i don't think i will.)
 In Thailand they have tried for many years to inject -- was it
 silver iodide -- to gain rain where they need it.
 
 | Does anyone really know what this will mean on the long run.
 |
 |Morrison and Stephenson: http://ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/ancient.pdf
 
 I'll read what follows, but i referred to what'd happen if the
 slowdown / speedup what happen in the few decades that the RR can
 eventually live.
 
 --steffen
 
 From: Rob Seaman sea...@noao.edu
 Date: January 23, 2015 at 8:08:28 AM MST
 To: Leap Second Discussion List leapsecs@leapsecond.com
 Subject: [LEAPSECS] The man in the moon's too slow
 Reply-To: Leap Second Discussion List leapsecs@leapsecond.com
 
 
 On Jan 23, 2015, at 5:33 AM, Steffen Nurpmeso sdao...@yandex.com wrote:
 
 Rob Seaman sea...@noao.edu wrote:
 It is much cleaner and more robust to support the entire history of leap 
 seconds.
 
 Ok i'll bite: why this?  This service would only track future changes with 
 the first adjustment happening at 2015-06-30.
 
 You are presuming a narrow (and so far unstated) concept of operations.  We 
 know there are retroactive use cases for UTC timekeeping and thus for leap 
 seconds.  Other methods and services may certainly be used to address those, 
 but there is no strong reason to limit the design of a new service to make 
 support impossible.  Also, by truncating support for a standard at an 
 arbitrary point sometime other than when the standard took effect confusion 
 becomes more likely among users or implementers.  Leap seconds began in 1972; 
 the encoding should start in 1972.
 
 The longer the string of positive leap seconds go on, the harder it will be 
 to force it negative in any physically realistic way.
 
 This is logical.  I indeed have *no* idea on what can happen, which is one 
 of the reasons that i am on this list, because so many specialists from many 
 different specialist fields can (or could) show up.  For example i didn't 
 know that even snow storms have a measurable effect on earth rotation.
 
 It's a question of scale.  A snow storm (even Snowpiercer) will not trigger a 
 negative leap second.  Maybe if you ran the Snowpiercer train in reverse?
 
 Does anyone really know what this will mean on the long run.
 
 Morrison and Stephenson: http://ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/ancient.pdf
 
 Before a few hundred BCE, the divergence of LOD from 86400 SI-seconds was too 
 large to be accommodated by ITU-R TF.460, i.e., it would have required more 
 than one leap second per month.  For a thousand years from Aristarchus to 
 Brahmagupta, there would have been around one a month; by the time of Abū 
 Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī a comfortable oversampling was possible. As the Moon recedes 
 the Earth will continue to slow (http://www.xkcd.com/1441/); Nyquist and 
 Shannon will continue to hold sway until Jacob Buckman gets a peek around the 
 far side of the Coalsack.
 
 For a couple of centuries around the time of Hypatia the Earth's slowing 
 appears to have paused and LOD decreased by a couple of milliseconds.  If 
 this happened now it could cause a long series of negative leap seconds - or 
 not - depending on the precise details of integrating under the curve.  As of 
 July this year there will be an accumulation of +36s to overcome, which is 
 precisely 1/50 of the half-hour color swatches on Steve Allen's diagram.  
 Recent downward dips in the 17th and 19th centuries don't appear to reach 
 that level.  Undoubtedly the MS data smooth over larger short term 
 excursions, but short term here implies many decades of notice.
 
 Bulletin C is issued whether or not a leap second occasion (currently June 
 and December, but could be any month) corresponds to an actual leap second. 
  The encoding (as in PHK’s example) should be able to represent a positive, 
 negative or absent leap second.
 
 That doesn't make sense to me.  An absent leap second doesn't change the 
 TAI-UTC drift, so why would you update the record?
 
   http://datacenter.iers.org/eop/-/somos/5Rgv/getTX/16/bulletinc-048.txt
 
 So in order to calculate the actual date where the drift adjustment occurs 
 you have to face
 a very elaborate conversion.  With two more bits for the day the calculation 
 could be performed when creating the record, 

Re: [LEAPSECS] The man in the moon's too slow

2015-01-23 Thread Steffen Nurpmeso
Rob Seaman sea...@noao.edu wrote:
 |On Jan 23, 2015, at 5:33 AM, Steffen Nurpmeso sdao...@yandex.com wrote:

 | This is logical.  I indeed have *no* idea on what can happen, \
 | which is one of the reasons that i am on this list, because \
 | so many specialists from many different specialist fields \
 | can (or could) show up.  For example i didn't know that \
 | even snow storms have a measurable effect on earth rotation.
 |
 |It's a question of scale.  A snow storm (even Snowpiercer) \
 |will not trigger a negative leap second.  Maybe if you ran \
 |the Snowpiercer train in reverse?

I haven't seen that film.  (And i don't think i will.)
In Thailand they have tried for many years to inject -- was it
silver iodide -- to gain rain where they need it.

 | Does anyone really know what this will mean on the long run.
 |
 |Morrison and Stephenson: http://ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/ancient.pdf

I'll read what follows, but i referred to what'd happen if the
slowdown / speedup what happen in the few decades that the RR can
eventually live.

--steffen
---BeginMessage---
On Jan 23, 2015, at 5:33 AM, Steffen Nurpmeso sdao...@yandex.com wrote:

 Rob Seaman sea...@noao.edu wrote:
 It is much cleaner and more robust to support the entire history of leap 
 seconds.
 
 Ok i'll bite: why this?  This service would only track future changes with 
 the first adjustment happening at 2015-06-30.

You are presuming a narrow (and so far unstated) concept of operations.  We 
know there are retroactive use cases for UTC timekeeping and thus for leap 
seconds.  Other methods and services may certainly be used to address those, 
but there is no strong reason to limit the design of a new service to make 
support impossible.  Also, by truncating support for a standard at an arbitrary 
point sometime other than when the standard took effect confusion becomes more 
likely among users or implementers.  Leap seconds began in 1972; the encoding 
should start in 1972.

 The longer the string of positive leap seconds go on, the harder it will be 
 to force it negative in any physically realistic way.
 
 This is logical.  I indeed have *no* idea on what can happen, which is one of 
 the reasons that i am on this list, because so many specialists from many 
 different specialist fields can (or could) show up.  For example i didn't 
 know that even snow storms have a measurable effect on earth rotation.

It's a question of scale.  A snow storm (even Snowpiercer) will not trigger a 
negative leap second.  Maybe if you ran the Snowpiercer train in reverse?

 Does anyone really know what this will mean on the long run.

Morrison and Stephenson: http://ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/ancient.pdf

Before a few hundred BCE, the divergence of LOD from 86400 SI-seconds was too 
large to be accommodated by ITU-R TF.460, i.e., it would have required more 
than one leap second per month.  For a thousand years from Aristarchus to 
Brahmagupta, there would have been around one a month; by the time of Abū 
Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī a comfortable oversampling was possible. As the Moon recedes 
the Earth will continue to slow (http://www.xkcd.com/1441/); Nyquist and 
Shannon will continue to hold sway until Jacob Buckman gets a peek around the 
far side of the Coalsack.

For a couple of centuries around the time of Hypatia the Earth's slowing 
appears to have paused and LOD decreased by a couple of milliseconds.  If this 
happened now it could cause a long series of negative leap seconds - or not - 
depending on the precise details of integrating under the curve.  As of July 
this year there will be an accumulation of +36s to overcome, which is precisely 
1/50 of the half-hour color swatches on Steve Allen's diagram.  Recent downward 
dips in the 17th and 19th centuries don't appear to reach that level.  
Undoubtedly the MS data smooth over larger short term excursions, but short 
term here implies many decades of notice.

 Bulletin C is issued whether or not a leap second occasion (currently June 
 and December, but could be any month) corresponds to an actual leap second.  
 The encoding (as in PHK’s example) should be able to represent a positive, 
 negative or absent leap second.
 
 That doesn't make sense to me.  An absent leap second doesn't change the 
 TAI-UTC drift, so why would you update the record?

http://datacenter.iers.org/eop/-/somos/5Rgv/getTX/16/bulletinc-048.txt

 So in order to calculate the actual date where the drift adjustment occurs 
 you have to face
 a very elaborate conversion.  With two more bits for the day the calculation 
 could be performed when creating the record, permitting simplemost 
 scripts/programs to display the correct date and time of the actual leap 
 second by only decoding the DNS information.

Even if provided an explicit ISO-8601 date/time stamp an application still 
needs to know Gregory's rules to interpret it.  Display isn't the only use 
case.  End of the month best corresponds to the letter and intent of TF.460.