Re: [LEAPSECS] Leap second status?

From: Seeds, Glen <Glen.Seeds_at_COGNOS.COM>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 16:55:25 -0500

This statement makes no sense to me. All humans on this planet operate on
the solar day (if I understand the meaning of that term correctly), so we
need the clocks we use to agree at some level with each other and with the
solar day. As you say, this is LTC, which is derived from UTC.

As a corollary, TAI is the right answer in lots of important places (such as
satellite communication), but human-readable time of day (used by most
computers and mundane data interchange) is not one of them. The latter needs
UTC as a base, and permanent move away from the solar day will render these
applications effectively unusable.

  /glen

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan_at_REUTERSHEALTH.COM]
Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2002 2:54 PM
To: LEAPSECS_at_ROM.USNO.NAVY.MIL
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] Leap second status?

The needs of the astronomy/navigation community are certainly important,
but the civil day no more needs to be tied to the solar day than the
civil month needs to be tied to the synodic month for the benefit of the
Jewish and Muslim communities. Keep your own calendar if you need one.


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Received on Thu Nov 28 2002 - 14:03:10 PST