[time-nuts] The future of UTC

[Steve Rooke]

On 15 July 2011 22:59, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
> In message <CACTjVNxhfQ79n3FVPRS4XYeN4Ouc6w7Q9ih1u2KisFG9D_fYsg at mail.gmail.com>
> , Steve Rooke writes:
>>Well, instead of leap seconds which seem to be the biggest bug bear
>>for everyone, keep the second as 1/86,400 of the earths current
>>rotation and adjust the factor used in the calculation of atomic time
>>on a regular basis.
>
> We tried that in the 1960-ies, and it didn't work for anybody at all.

Well, I really said that tongue in cheek just to stir up a hornets
nest as I know it was not practical. The scientific community (and
some industrial processes) do need a precisely defined, and
reproducible, UNIT of time, that's a given. This does not mean that
this atomic standard is the magic bullet for everything related to
time though. In fact I'd go as far as to say that "atomic time" has
nothing to do with real time and should never have been coupled with
it in the first place. For most of the world, the correct measure of a
second is 1/86,400 or the current rotation of this planet as that is
the only thing that makes sense and keeps correlation over all of
time. The idea of having to add a leap second every month in 2,500
years time, assuming we still exist then, seems quite ludicrous, I
agree with you entirely, but the idea of the day gradually drifting
out of sync with our artificial time is also not workable. I saw a
comment to your article which suggested that we ditch leap seconds and
leave the problem to future generations, seems an anathema to me.

Steve
> --
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
>
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-- 
Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
- Einstein