A modest proposal:
Instead of adding randomly-placed leap seconds to UTC or allowing UTC
to drift from UT1 etc, the timing community should just change the
second's definition from time to time as needed. That is, dither the
Cs transition frequency between 9,192,631,770 Hz or ,780 Hz annually
to make time speed up or slow down to match the earth's rotation.
After all, that 9,192,631,770.0 Hz frequency is an arbitrary number.
It just happened to be close to the MST-derived second in 1967,
rounded to the nearest 10 Hz.
The beauty of this method is that there are only a few hundred Cs
clocks in the world, and they are phase locked to 10.000 MHz or
1.0230 MHz oscillators. Changing the PLL divisor on a few hundred Cs
clocks by 10 Hz has got to be a lot easier than adding or subtracting
unpredictable leap seconds from all the millions of software clocks
in the world.
(Yes, it would be a bit of work to modify all those Cs clocks. The
GPS satellite clocks may not currently have the ability to program
the PLL from Earth. But those clocks will all need to replaced in a
few years.)
All the Rb and quartz standards out there are secondary and
disciplined to Cs clocks anyways, so they would accommodate the new
second definition with no hardware or software changes. All the
timekeeping software of the telecom world would get simpler.
The pulsar astronomers who require very precise absolute time units
will be able to use the history of the Cs division ratio in their
elapsed time calculations, and UTC will always be within a second of
MST if the Cs frequency is dithered every year as needed.
Is this an old idea?
Am I missing something?
--
--David Forbes, Tucson, AZ
http://www.cathodecorner.com/
_______________________________________________
time-nuts mailing list
time-nuts@febo.com
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
