[LEAPSECS] A leap second proposal to consider -- LSEM

[Rob Seaman]

Hi Tom,


> The key point of LSEM is that 100% of the months would have leap seconds,


I think this is a previously undiscussed option.  When +/- dithering came up before (when the world and we were younger) the idea was that a leap second would rather amount to the omission of one of the normal monthly dithering steps.


> If that means DUT1 gets closer to 1.0 instead of 0.9 so be it.


So be it indeed, however note an alternative strategy (proposed in precambrian times):

	http://iraf.noao.edu/~seaman/leap

The current standard provides a lot of leeway in implementing UTC.  That leeway could be used to address our varied concerns in diverse ways.

If politics is to triumph over process, even better is a political solution that requires no international agreement at all.  For instance, we have the "Draft Alternate Proposal" from the final slide of the Torino Colloquium:  "Evolve from the current UTC Standard by transition to Temps International (TI) [...]  TI should be a continuous atomic time scale, without Leap Seconds, that is synchronized with UTC at the time of transition." (http://www.inrim.it/luc/cesio/itu/closure.pdf)

"Universal Time" *means* "mean solar time".  It is natural to call something that is in no way mean solar time something other than universal time.

Rob