Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
> Solar time *DOES NOT MATTER*.
Of course it does. For folks who may not have been around the last
five times these topics were raised, the list archives are available
at:
http://rom.usno.navy.mil/archives/leapsecs.html
For many purposes, Atomic Time with nicely regular standard seconds
does not matter either. Perhaps we should just do away with clocks
entirely. The question isn't how we can justify the need for both an
unsegmented constant interval timescale and a timescale rooted in the
orientation of our home planet. There are plenty of technical and not
so technical reasons for each. The question is why we are driven at
this particular moment to seek to drive through a compromise that is no
compromise at all.
Take the situation to an extreme and we are literally discussing
turning day into night. This ridiculous leap hour monstrosity is
obviously a cover for ignoring Earth orientation entirely. Why do
proponents of this non-solution continually confound periodic effects
and secular effects?
Daylight Saving Time? Periodic. Leap Seconds? Secular.
I have to admit that the notion that civil time should be based on
time-of-day simply seems "right" to me. I have to wonder why it seems
so offensive to some others. The reality is that UTC is itself already
a rather elegant compromise that allows both TAI and UT1 to be
distributed using a single system. If we're interested in making
changes to the current status quo, why have we not rooted the
conversation in the precise requirements and details of whatever system
is intended to replace the current system. For instance, WWV will fail
as DUT grows. How will that be resolved?
Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
Received on Thu Jan 20 2005 - 22:37:22 PST