[LEAPSECS] A consolidated approach.

[Tom Van Baak]

That's an interesting approach getting ISO involved. I have no
direct experience with that group; can you fill some of us in on
the workings, or the scope of that institution? And specifically,
how does ISO relate to, or compare to, ITU, or BIPM (which I
assumed was in change of the system of units we use). Or
the UN for that matter.

As for your "universal" comment; that's problematic. I suspect
you will find many uses of that word which are quite unrelated
to astronomy; from universal studios to universal health case.

If in fact a revised or new time scale still has the word universal
it in, chalk it up to history. I mean, we still talk about dialing a
number, even though rotary phones are long gone. We use the
word "on line" even though there is now rarely a telephone wire
involved (and don't you love, "wireless on-line").

Flushed with their success to demote Pluto isn't grounds for
astronomers or ISO policing the world of timing and removing
the word universal from any time scale that has better stability
than earth. Couldn't one could equally make a case that basing
a time scale on a generic undisturbed cesium atom is far more
"universal" than the unpredictable rotation of a particular planet?
In which case you should move to strip the word universal from
UT1, etc.

A suggestion -- call your the new time scale ISO-86400. If it
includes leap seconds, then go for ISO-235960.

/tvb