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

[Rob Seaman]

On Aug 5, 2010, at 1:55 PM, M. Warner Losh wrote:


> ashtongj <ashtongj at comcast.net> writes:

>

>> 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."

>>

>

> In one of these mailing lists, there was a debate about NASA using  

> the term "GMT" when they really meant "UTC".  There were many  

> different references cited during that debate.  One of them  

> indicated that even in the UK there's not a clear distinction  

> between GMT and UTC and often (but not always?) the terms are used  

> interchangeably.  UTC being viewed as just another way to realize  

> GMT with some small, trivial error for the real pendants.


Precisely.  (Or rather, approximately.)  It will prove impossible to  
untangle the historical identification of UTC as - well - a flavor of  
actual Universal Time, which is to say a way of approximating GMT.

The simplest and most direct (and most likely to succeed) way to  
achieve a goal of removing leap seconds from civil timekeeping would  
be to advocate GPS timekeeping as the alternative.  Civilians love  
their GPS units.

Stop viewing this issue as a way to cleverly (that is to say, naively)  
sneak through a putatively invisible change to every clock on the  
planet.  Rather, view it as a way to make timekeeping sexy and visible  
and of significant economic interest.  There is already a healthy GPS  
industry in place that would be delighted to fill orders for new clocks.

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory