Rob Seaman scripsit:
> No one has ever claimed that solar time won't face a challenge in the
> far future. This proposal does absolutely nothing to address these
> challenges - in fact, it complicates the issues by introducing a huge
> unpalatable time step that will be no more predictable than leap
> seconds.
As should be eminently clear by now, I absolutely oppose leaps of any kind,
whether seconds or hours, in universal time (lower case generic term).
Hours are certainly worse than seconds in this respect.
I do favor the idea of adjusting T LCT-UTC offsets as needed.
> And to clarify, it isn't solar time that faces this challenge - it
> will be atomic time. The Earth will continue to circle the Sun and
> spin on its axis with enviable reliability. It is our simplified
> model of the tick, tick, tick of time that will fall short. Civil
> time will obviously continue to be synchronized to the Sun.
Eventually that will become impossible. When solar days are 48 (current)
hours long, we will just have to get used to the idea that every other
waking period is in darkness.
> As I said more than four years ago (http://iraf.noao.edu/
> ~seaman/leap), in the far future there are few options other than
> readjusting the length of the civil second to recalibrate to match
> the slowing Earth.
What, and recalculate every single measurement ever made involving
length or duration? A complete nightmare.
--
I am expressing my opinion. When my John Cowan
honorable and gallant friend is called, jcowan_at_reutershealth.com
he will express his opinion. This is http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
the process which we call Debate. --Winston Churchill
Received on Mon Aug 01 2005 - 12:41:13 PDT