I can't help with the flying cars, but UTC does "deliver" a frequency that is the most precisely and accurately measured quantity known to humans. Time is the integral of that frequency, and over one leapsecond-less day a frequency error of 1.E-12 corresponds to a time error of 86400*1.E-12 = 86 nanoseconds.
The USNO and BIPM web pages give our algorithms, though it takes a bit of clicking. The basic idea is that each clock's systematic errors in time, frequency and/or frequency drift are corrected for and the result goes into a weighted average. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sanjeev Gupta Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 2:23 AM To: Leap Second Discussion List Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] Looking-glass, through On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 13:47, Tom Van Baak <[email protected]> wrote: You really didn't expect 250 diffeent atomic clocks around the world to all agree at the ns level at all times did you? <tounge-in-cheek> Why not? nano is 10E-9, and I see references to people trying for clocks with 10E-12 on this list. And what good is the "atom" part of an atomic clock, if it can't even handle "nano"? </foot-in-mouth> Still waiting for the flying cars I was promised ... -- Sanjeev Gupta +65 98551208 http://www.linkedin.com/in/ghane _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
