[LEAPSECS] ITU-R SG7 to consider UTC on October 4

[ashtongj]

(I'm sorry for any duplication, I meant to send this to the group.)

McCarthy and Seidelmann, on page 17 of _TIME: From Earth Rotation to 
Atomic Physics_  (2009) state "GMT is still used as the official time 
scale of the United Kingdom and in some communication systems as UTC."

I have also read, although I do not recall exactly where, that the UK 
Parliament debated changing the law to specify that the basis of time 
was UTC, but in the end no action was taken.

On 2010-08-05 3:17 PM, Jonathan E. Hardis wrote:

> On Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:54:49 -0400

> ashtongj <ashtongj at comcast.net> wrote:

>> If the leap second is dropped, the change will become perceptible to

>> ordinary voters, especially when there are several seconds difference

>> in the seconds field of legal time in the U.S. compared to some other

>> countries.

>

> The 15th Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures (the formal body

> formed by the Treaty of the Meter) “strongly endorsed” the usage of UTC

> as the basis of civil time among the signatory nations and throughout

> the world.

>

> What countries do you think are using UT1 (or another time scale with an

> astronomical basis) for their legal time, and which would therefore

> drift away from those using UTC?

>

> - Jonathan

>