On Tue 2011/02/01 11:37:59 -0000, Tony Finch wrote in a message to: Leap Second Discussion List <[email protected]>
>> In the very distant future when the mean solar day is 86401 SI >> seconds long (or hopefully well before that), the pretence that >> the day is only 86400 SI seconds long, with its reductio ad >> absurdum result of a leap-second-per-day, should hopefully cause >> a re-examination of this convenient untruth. > >On the other hand, dealing with that will only require a timezone >adjustment every ten years or so, which is perfectly tolerable. Let me put it this way. In the distant past there were only 86399 SI seconds in a day. Do we say today that there are 86399s with a leap second per day to bring it up to 86400s? Or do we simply say that there are 86400s per day? >On the gripping hand, that will be tens of thousands of years in the >future, by which time the Gregorian calendar will no longer accurately >reflect the ratio between the length of the year and the length of the >day. Agreed. Which is to say that that the "quadratic blow out" in leap seconds is a specious argument which should be rejected. Regards, Mark Calabretta _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
