Re: [LEAPSECS] Risks of change to UTC

From: Mark Calabretta <mcalabre_at_ATNF.CSIRO.AU>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 11:09:17 +1100

On Sat 2006/01/21 15:15:32 PDT, "M. Warner Losh" wrote
in a message to: LEAPSECS_at_ROM.USNO.NAVY.MIL

>Somewhere around betwee 45,000-80,000 you'll need more than one leap
>second a day.

You should recognize this as a reductio ad absurdum argument; at that
time there will be 86401 SI seconds per day - the absurdity being in
continuing to pretend that there are only 86400.

If at that time the number of seconds per day is officially changed to
86401 then the millenia of accumulated quadratic drift will be wiped
away at once and the rate of accumulation of leap seconds reset to zero.

The next step is to ask - what if we increased the official length of
the day before the situation gets so far out of hand, to 86400 plus some
fraction of a second?

Mark Calabretta
ATNF
Received on Sun Jan 22 2006 - 16:09:36 PST