Ed Davies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > UTC is expressible as a real number in just the same way that > Gregorian dates (with months with different lengths and leap > days) can be with the Julian calendar. > > There's no difference in principle between converting from a > TAI time in seconds since some epoch to a UTC date/time in > days, hours, minutes, seconds and fractions of a second [...]
You have dodged the problem so conveniently! Of course I know how to convert UTC to TAI or vice-versa, but that is not the problem statement at hand. The problem statement at hand is to express UTC *itself* as a real number, rather than convert it to some other time scale. For UTC itself must be expressible as a real number in order to be called a time *scale*. If you admit that this cannot be done, then you should revise TF.460-6 to remove all use of the word "scale" and openly admit to UTC being a time non-scale. Then no one will use UTC as the civil time scale since it'll be obvious that as a non-scale it is not suitable as a scale of any kind. I stand by my assertion that the current ITU-R spec for UTC (and its previous CCIR versions) is a clever scam, a parlor trick designed to sell a non-scale to civil philosophers wanting a SCALE of civil time. The manner in which it was adopted in 1970 by CCIR, a shove-down-the- throat move reminiscent of the current leap hour scheme, does not help them look any better. MS
