[LEAPSECS] Reliability

[Rob Seaman]

M. Warner Losh wrote:


> It also wouldn't be a leap-hour in the UTC time scale, but rather  

> just a DST without end once in 50 generations.


Is it too much to ask that an attempt be made to describe how the  
logistics would work?


> Of course, I doubt there'd be more than a couple of these shifts  

> before people realize that something else is needed.


Design that solution instead.


> There may never be a shift, but instead a change to a whole new time  

> system as well that suits the needs of future generations better.   

> One that we cannot imagine from this vantage point in time.



Huh?  Astronomers toss around concepts of black holes, dark energy,  
microlensing and exoplanets, but humanity will evolve into some  
species unimaginable to a generation raised on Arthur C. Clarke and  
Philip K. Dick?


> Can you imagine being alive at the time of Christ and thinking you'd  

> be able to measure the length of the day so accurately that you'd  

> detect variations at the 1e-8 level?


An artificial comparison.  There has been more evolution of our  
science and culture in the past 100 years than the previous 2000.   
Also, nobody is suggesting civil timekeeping needs to trace solar time  
to better than the tenth second currently implemented.  Rather, the  
ITU wants to degrade this by close to 5 orders of magnitude.

While we shouldn't expect Bill and Ted to have many (or even any)  
details right, it is eminently practical for even primordial ooze such  
as us to speculate on implications thousands of years hence.  Having a  
plan that later proves incomplete is better than having no plan at all.

And the obvious refrain - use GPS or some other perfectly acceptable  
and already available option and leave Universal Time to the people  
who value it.  We get it that you think UT is a pointless exercise.   
Use something else instead.


> And even if you did, would you have the skills necessary to work out  

> all the implications of that in advance?  Or that there'd be a  

> standard written for it in a language that wasn't even around at the  

> time?


Do we believe that the Julian and Gregorian calendars were promulgated  
in English? :-)

Yes, I do believe this group is very skillful.  I wonder why we're so  
shy about putting those skills to good use designing a better  
timekeeping solution, rather than seeking an easy way out?

Rob