Just checking in - glad to see the conversation continues. I think a
cafeteria reply might be warranted. Press delete now if you disagree.
Poul-Henning Kamp says:
My interpretation of this is that systems which assume that DUT <
1s fail
This is one example of a larger class of risks that will arise from
breaking the identification of civil time with GMT that has held
since the nineteenth century. The ad hoc interpretation of no
individual or small group is sufficient to address the widespread
implications of such a change to the world's clocks. Any serious
proposal should include a serious risk analysis. Since we're talking
about changing an international standard that has held for 30+ years,
the onus falls on the group proposing a change.
That's probably true, but since DUT is only relevant if you study
extraterrestial objects, we can safely assume that 99.9% or more of
those systems involve astronomers and optics.
The Sun is an extraterrestrial object. We study the Sun not only due
to basic scientific curiosity, but because everything we do on the
Earth depends on the Sun. Civil time is solar time because no other
periodic phenomenon so dominates our lives. Leap seconds are the
mechanism that is currently used to synchronize our clocks to the
solar day. Your assumption of safety is in reality a source of
extreme danger until proven otherwise.
Bill Hawkins says:
The WSJ says that the UK still uses GMT. When the NASA person
called out "On my mark..." time during pre-launch activities, it
was specified as GMT.
Precisely. The implicit and explicit identification of UTC with GMT
is rampant in civil time usage.
What relationship does GMT have to UTx time? The hill in Greenwich
is now just a museum, right?
An excellent question - not just a technical issue, but legal and
historical and...
In a world without leap seconds, one interpretation is that Greenwich
will start drifting monotonically out to sea. One second of time is
15 seconds of arc. At the latitude of the UK, each missed leap
second is thus equivalent to about 300 meters. Feel free to correct
me and to speculate on the direction of motion of the prime
meridian. A large part of the expense of discontinuing leap seconds
is the confusion factor. Think this is an absurd example? It isn't
if the proposal doesn't delve into its own (many) implications.
Whatever else it is, the current proposal is embarrassing in what it
does not address.
Bjorn Gabrielsson says:
Legal time is often based on UTC. A slight adjustment of the
definition of UTC will not break legal timekeeping.
There are worlds of pain in the words "often" and "slight". Lawsuits
resulted from the nineteenth century transitions from apparent solar
time to mean solar time, and then again from local time to standard
time. Anyone want to suggest that the twenty-first century is less
litigious than the nineteenth?
if system A breaks at DUT1 of 1.0seconds B & C might die at 5 and
10 seconds, giving plenty of time to patch the systems. System A
does seem to live on the edge already, maybe a good candidate to
patch earlier...
Interesting attempt to convert the stochastic realization of failures
into a strength. To triage the remediation of systems A, B and C,
somebody will have to perform a risk analysis first.
Maybe the astronomers have not been following the lengthy
discussions among the real timekeepers of today. Whos fault is that?
Astronomers have been following - and leading - such discussions
since this issue reared its ugly head. It is not our fault that the
policy makers don't choose to participate in the same forums. This
is not only true of time-nuts, but also, for instance, the leapsecs
mailing list (http://rom.usno.navy.mil/archives/leapsecs.html).
I reject your premise that bureaucrats are now the "real timekeepers".
Bill Hawkins says:
Please do something useful and tell me how I can defeat the effort
to remove leap seconds, or worse, put leaps off until they are more
acutely felt by the next generation. [...] Let us have activism,
not argument.
Sometimes argument is the only activism available. I believe
"unofficial" discussion is the only reason the "official" process has
not proceeded to its intended completion.
Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
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