Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
Solar time *DOES NOT MATTER*.
Of course it does. For folks who may not have been around the last five times these topics were raised, the list archives are available at:
http://rom.usno.navy.mil/archives/leapsecs.html
For many purposes, Atomic Time with nicely regular standard seconds does not matter either. Perhaps we should just do away with clocks entirely. The question isn't how we can justify the need for both an unsegmented constant interval timescale and a timescale rooted in the orientation of our home planet. There are plenty of technical and not so technical reasons for each. The question is why we are driven at this particular moment to seek to drive through a compromise that is no compromise at all.
Take the situation to an extreme and we are literally discussing turning day into night. This ridiculous leap hour monstrosity is obviously a cover for ignoring Earth orientation entirely. Why do proponents of this non-solution continually confound periodic effects and secular effects?
Daylight Saving Time? Periodic. Leap Seconds? Secular.
I have to admit that the notion that civil time should be based on time-of-day simply seems "right" to me. I have to wonder why it seems so offensive to some others. The reality is that UTC is itself already a rather elegant compromise that allows both TAI and UT1 to be distributed using a single system. If we're interested in making changes to the current status quo, why have we not rooted the conversation in the precise requirements and details of whatever system is intended to replace the current system. For instance, WWV will fail as DUT grows. How will that be resolved?
Rob Seaman National Optical Astronomy Observatory