Can I muddy the waters with some facts/evidence I have collected recently? (if your answer is "no" - then hit 'delete' now ;-)
First where do I fit in this debate. I am the systems manager for the Astronomy group at St.Andrews University. We run a small observatory with 4 telescopes, a couple of Meade LX200s, a 1980s built scope on a ~1900 Grub Parsons mount (where setting is done with large metal rings with painted scales - too new for Victorian engraved brass, too old for digital encoders, very nice to use) and a 1m class Schmidt-cass built on-site in the 1960s. When this discussion first came up I was about to re-re-write my code for the digital setting circles that have been added to the 1m telescope, and this needs a time feed - UTC does nicely but if it going to change I want to know. Over the past year or two I have given a talk entitled "What time is it?" to local Astronomical Societies. This is a quick romp from sundials giving 12 'hours' sunrise to sunset to TAI, UTC, TDT, TDB, LST, etc. with a bit about the moon slowing us down. As part of this I do a check on the accuracy of the timekeeping of the audience. The full range for the audience is usually plus/minus 20secs with ~25% in the +/-5 secs range. I had one gentleman who was happily 2 mins slow - good enough for catching an Edinburgh bus, he claimed! Thus we have a very rough measure of the accuracy of the interested man-in-the-street timekeeping. Yesterday morning over a cup of coffee I floated the question of leapseconds and their abolition passed a couple of friends in the University IT Services dept. One quickly decided that leapseconds were the obvious solution, then realised we have them, and wondered what the problem was. The other, thought for a bit, then decided that decoupling time from from the rotation of the earth was a bit more philosophical than technical and was the sort of world cultural heritage thing that should not be tinkered with. A slight worry I have is what the popular media would make of it if they decided that "scientists" were going to mess about with time. Yet more anti-science in the media :( Sorry nothing posative in this - but then users of clock-on-the-wall time are always going to be a problem. Roger ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Roger Stapleton [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of St.Andrews, School of Physics & Astronomy North Haugh, St.Andrews, Fife. KY16 9SS Phone 01334-463141 Fax 01334-463104