[LEAPSECS] Toasting Unix timestamp 1234567890

[Zefram]

Magnus Danielson wrote:

>Thus, the TAI-UTC difference was 4.213170 + (40587-39126) x 0.002592s = 

>8.000082 s.


Yes.  This lets you calculate the number of *TAI* seconds since the
Unix epoch.  There were 63072001.999918 TAI seconds (exactly) in UTC's
version of 1970 and 1971 together.


>So depending on which interpretation you choose... I see some 3-4 

>different times occuring. The spread amongst them is about 26 s or so.


I think it's clear that Unix time has the well-established naive mapping
to some form of UT.  You can pick UT1 or UTC, giving answers that differ
by a fraction of a second.  Anything that secularly counts other than
86400 per UT day isn't Unix time: this includes counting either UTC or
TAI seconds.

-zefram