M. Warner Losh wrote:
Actually, that solution does keep UTC coupled to the sun. I tend to
agree that large adjustments like that would never happen.
Timezones are an hour wide. Any such adjustment would only occur
after the entire error budget propagated all the way across. This is
equivalent to no solution at all. I wasn't addressing the issue of
"coupling", but rather the more basic issue of "solving the problem".
The idea there would be to publish the UT1 and not worry that it
grows without bound. Then you don't have to coordinate the
insertion of leap seconds, just publish a measurement that says what
the delta is.
I won't critique this notion now, but if this is part of the solution
shouldn't it be addressed in the proposal?
What isn't addressed is keeping them in sync. They are two
different things, and we shouldn't lose sight of that fact.
Ok - that's two rather obvious things that are missing from the
proposal.
And embargo on leap seconds forever is exactly the same thing as
saying UTC is no longer tied to the sun. That's a change that
should be considered, even if it ultimately proves to be not a
viable change.
And the status quo should also be considered in any trade-off study.
As well as entertaining the Torino consensus of leaving UTC alone by
defining a new timescale unencumbered by annoying astronomers. And the
numerous interesting variations of the zoneinfo concept. Or simply
distributing GPS time instead of UTC.
This is a proposed solution, and one that may have merit. However,
only if the users of time for which it actually matters that DUT1 is
< 1s can get the larger corrections from somewhere else, retool,
etc. These costs may be smaller than continued insertions of leap
seconds (they could very well be larger too: nobody has done a
public, comprehensive study here).
I'm all for coherently studying the issues.
The heart of my argument, however, is distinct from the need to
constrain DUT1. Rather, civil time is obviously a flavor of mean
solar time (sidereal time plus the offset for lapping the Sun every
year) - see list archive for discussion(s). In fact, the small
cadence of leap seconds at the current epoch is the only reason an
embargo can even be entertained as an option.
We can productively debate non-UTC options or different scheduling
strategies or different transport infrastructure or different
tolerances, but night divides the day and the leap-second is
ultimately a mechanism to keep the definition of the day stationary.
Embargoing leap seconds is an unworkable strategy because the rate
also matters, not just local offsets.
Rob
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