Re: [LEAPSECS] Draft Questionnaire

From: Rob Seaman <seaman_at_noao.edu>
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 08:11:18 -0700 (MST)

Demetrios Matsakis said:

> ...if UTC is redefined so that there are
> no new leap seconds after N years...

And Ed Davies does a good job of summarizing one possible
interpretation of these "no new leap second" tea leaves
[his bullets 1-7 omitted]:

> Have I understood you correctly or is there another interpretation?
> I think it's worth being really clear what is being discussed here.

It most certainly is.

A few weeks back I asked whether the proposal being considered would
be circulated for discussion prior to the May meeting in Italy. Not
only has the proposal not been forthcoming, nobody has even bothered
to answer my question.

One is left to wonder if a coherent proposal even exists? Or is
there just this inchoate "notion" that it would be sufficient for the
personnel of organizations that are currently tasked with managing
leap seconds to simply stop doing their jobs?

If there is a change to the civil time standard (currently UTC),
a prudent suggestion might be that the legal and technical precision
of the standard should be improved, not simply left for our
grandchildren's grandchildren to figure out.

Might I also suggest one additional change to this discussion?
Since under this "no new leap second" suggestion (whatever the
details) UTC would stop being Universal in any sense of the word,
could we just agree that instead of modifying UTC, we're proposing
a new time standard, and that this new standard should be called
something else entirely?

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
Received on Sat Jan 18 2003 - 07:11:26 PST