There exist, in use, two differing definitions of the dynamical equinox. The one is called the rotational equinox, and the other is called the inertial equinox (Standish 1981, [ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1981A%26A...101L..17S]). The IERS uses the inertial equinox.
I differentiate between the solar year, where the dynamical inertial equinox determines the length of the year and, and the tropical year, where the dynamical rotational equinox determines the length of the year. I have not seen any comments on this aspect of my post. There has so far mostly been the usual comments, for or against the mean solar day as the ”natural” unit of time. I think there is a lot of resistance against dropping the leap second because the SI second builds upon a new understanding of the solar year, where the inertial equinox, and not the rotational equinox, determines the length of the year. Religion has always used the rotational equinox to determine time, and never used the barycenter of the solar system, because measurement of the barycenter belongs to modern time. Therefore I think a lot of resistance comes from religion. Modern society shall use the barycenter of the solar system, and the inertial equinox, to determine time (with help from atomic clocks). But the tropical year, and the rotational equinox, will always be part of for instance the dating of Easter. 2014-08-21 9:06 GMT+02:00 Clive D.W. Feather <[email protected]>: > Warner Losh said: > > Absolutely. We get leap days right because we don?t have to hear from > the pope?s astronomers every year to know if it will be a leap year or not. > We know for thousands of years. > > And note that it was exactly that problem that led Caius Julius to reform > the calendar in the first place. > > [...] > > Another thing we could do is [...] > > Or we could decouple UTC from GMT and allow each country to decide when to > change its offset. That subsumes the whole problem into the summer/winter > time switch, or the "move past the International Date Line" switch, that > the whole world knows how to handle, even if they don't all do it. > > -- > Clive D.W. Feather | If you lie to the compiler, > Email: [email protected] | it will get its revenge. > Web: http://www.davros.org | - Henry Spencer > Mobile: +44 7973 377646 > _______________________________________________ > LEAPSECS mailing list > [email protected] > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs >
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