Hello,
I'd like to thank Wolfgang Dick for circulating the announcement a few weeks
ago of our meeting, Decoupling Civil Timekeeping from Earth Rotation. While
primarily a meeting on the implications of redefining UTC for astronomical and
astronautical applications, the organizers would very much welcome submissions
discussing the impact on sundials and related technologies and their usage and
stakeholders:
http://futureofutc.org
I'd also like to thank Tony Finch for circulating the link to our preprint, and
have a few comments to add to what he wrote at the time:
> See also this preprint from American Scientist.
The official, more elegantly formatted, preprint is available from:
http://www.agi.com/downloads/media-center/in-the-news/Future-Of-Time-American-Scientist-July-Aug-2011.pdf
> Note that the people involved in both the article and the colloquium are in
> favour of keeping leapseconds.
Rather I'd say we are all in favor of preserving Coordinated Universal Time as
a representation of the actual Universal Time. Leap seconds are a means to an
end. We're willing to discuss other possible means, as has been proven many
times (over more than a decade :-) on the leap seconds mailing list:
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
> The ITU-R has also issued another questionnaire to its member states on this
> issue.
The Earth Orientation Center of the IERS has its own very brief questionnaire:
http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/questionnaire/questionnaire.html
Humans, not just "member states" are encouraged to take a few moments and fill
it out. Your community will be affected - your community should have a voice.
> It has remained controversial at every level as it has progressed through the
> ITU's bureaucracy. The final stage will be a vote at the radiocommunication
> assembly next year.
Controversial indeed, however, the scope of our upcoming meeting (5-6 Oct 2011,
Exton, PA USA) is to discuss the impacts and contingent reengineering if the
ITU does vote to redefine UTC. It should make for a very engaging agenda. Of
interest to the sundial community there will be a presentation on the vision
and architecture (eg, solar synchronizer and equation of time cam) of the
10,000 year clock (http://longnow.org/clock/) by one of their project
engineers. We are also organizing a visit and talk at the analemmatic sundial
at Longwood Gardens (http://bit.ly/omBqrE) following the meeting. Ken
Seidelmann provided its accurate calibration; the ITU's redefinition of
Coordinated Universal Time would render calibration rather a moot issue for
this and all sundials.
Finally, for those in Europe and the UK, the British Royal Society is also
holding a meeting on the redefinition of UTC on 3-4 November 2011:
http://royalsociety.org/events/UTC-for-21st-century/
Contact the organizers regarding their meeting's scope and agenda (and what
they favor, for that matter).
Thank you!
Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
Tucson, AZ
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