Warner Losh wrote: >Eg, would we really be worse off if we'd said 'there will be a leap second >every 18 months starting Jan 1 1972?
That would be a pretty good result, but would anyone have picked that rate of leaps in 1971? That period happened to be a local maximum of LOD: since 1966 the UTC frequency offset had been its highest ever at 30 ppb, corresponding to a second every 386 days, and 1972 ended up having two leap seconds. A decree based on those few years would most likely have dictated a leap second every 12 months, which would put DUT1 around +19 s in 2018 rather than the +3 s that you suggest. Still good enough for civil timekeeping (especially as a temporary deviation that would be corrected by a new observation-based rule after a few decades), but not as awesome as you made the scheme look. -zefram _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] https://pairlist6.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
