Hi all,
Ed Davies <ls_at_EDAVIES.NILDRAM.CO.UK wrote:
>It is difficult to imagine that there are many people who:
>
> a) need an approximation to UT1 which is better than upto 0.9
> seconds off but would be OK if it was not much more than 0.5
> seconds and
>
> b) don't have access to a reasonably fresh value for DUT1.
>
>I.e., will reducing DUT1 from a maximum of 0.8s or so as happens in
>practice to just over 0.5s actually help anybody?
You might be right, but UTC should serve applications too even if their
percentage is quite low.
>
>Perhaps a better use for the margin provided by better than required
>prediction of the Earth's rotation would be to increase the guarenteed
>notice of leap seconds from the defined 8 weeks to closer to the
>current practice of nearly 6 months.
Refining the leap second solution as described by ed does not solve the
problem, that these applications are usually not able to handle the leap
second correctly at all. Using leap second we simply loose the continuity of
time.
Regards,
György Szondy
gyorgy_szondy_at_hotmail.com
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Received on Wed May 07 2003 - 04:39:05 PDT