[LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

Zefram wrote:


> I hypothesise that a human civilisation entirely disconnected from  

> natural diurnal cycles would use an artificial 100 ks cycle for this  

> purpose, and a 1 Ms cycle as the analogue of our week.


A jejune (and rather moot) hypothesis.  In such circumstances, why  
assume the existence of a week in the first place?  Or the use of base  
10 at all?

I'm not sure I want to encourage this thread :-) but the answer is  
precisely that you are positing a human enterprise.  Merely by  
referring to "civilization", you are conjuring vast webs of  
connections to natural cycles at all scales.  Even in an extreme  
"Caves of Steel" scenario, the troglodyte trillions are locked to  
diurnal cycles of solar power stations and the daily cadences of   
robotic combine harvesters to feed the buried billions, and even  
commerce with other star systems points to the rhythms of other suns
.

> In the absence of days and years, though, calculations that involve  

> only metric units are a lot easier than what we presently put up with.


Hence the prevalence of radians in everyday use :-)  The only thing  
natural about the metric system is that humans have ten fingers and  
the quadrant of the Earth something approximating 10 megameters.  That  
sexagesimal notation emerged from the fertile crescent merely attests  
to the notation's durability compared to the system debouched by the  
Reign of Terror.

Rob Seaman
NOAO