[LEAPSECS] Terminology and Requirements (was Re: How good could civil timekeeping be? )

[Steve Allen]

On Thu 2008-02-14T19:00:09 -0500, Tim Shepard hath writ:

> If the TAI/UTC synchronized ticking were lost for awhile, what would

> happen then?


Audoin & Guinot (2001)
p. 252, sect. 7.3.1 "Reliability"

    ...  Imagine for a moment what would happen if, just as a
    practical joke, someone found a way to stop all atomic clocks,
    just for a short time.  This would cause such a tremendous
    disturbance in world affairs that the loss of TAI would be a
    totally insignificant matter.  Furthermore, when it came to
    setting it up again, the phase of TAI could be retrieved to within
    a few tenths of a microsecond by observations of rapidly rotating
    pulsars...

--
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