On 2026-07-18 13:54, Tim Parenti via tz wrote:
We managed with only 27 in the last ~half-century, and now 0 in a
decade, but somehow there's an imminent threat that we might need
another 3600 so quickly that we'd literally run out of months to put
them in one by one? The math isn't mathing here.
For a more reasonable estimate, Duncan Agnew recently used a geophysical
model to run 8000 Monte Carlo simulations predicting TAI−UTC through
2100. 80% of his runs fell in the approximate range [−25 s, +180 s].
Since TAI−UTC is currently 37 s, at the lower bound of that range we’d
need to net about 60 negative leap seconds by 2100; at the upper bound
we’d need to net about 140 positive leap seconds.
Other people have made other predictions; these things can be tricky.
Agnew DC. The future(s) of UT1: a geophysical discussion. Metrologia.
2026;63:015010 <https://doi.org/10.1088/1681-7575/ae449f>.
