[LEAPSECS] An example

[Rob Seaman]

Note that civil timestamps and rates will be wrong the entire time, not just at the end of time.

On Nov 4, 2010, at 11:50 AM, Warner Losh wrote:


> On 11/04/2010 10:23, Zefram wrote:

>> Ian Batten wrote:

>>> I didn't mean in legislative terms, I meant in "keeping the equinoxes

>>> where they are in the calendar terms" terms.

>> For that objective, any arithmetic calendar fails eventually.  The maximal

>> date of "eventually" is determined by the precision with which we can

>> predict future astronomical motions, and IIRC we lose day-level precision

>> on this a few thousand years hence.  So to get the equinoxes right for the

>> year 4000, let alone the year 44000, you need an observational calendar.

>> 

>> Happily, the Gregorian calendar is an arithmetic one, and the year 4000

>> is unambiguously a leap year.

> Yea, 30k years in the future we'll still likely be within a day or two, which means (a) we have a long time to solve the problem and (b) we have a long time to ignore the problem.

> 

> Given that it took hundreds of years to get all on one calendar that's accurate on the millennium time scale.  I imagine it might take thousands of years to all get on a calendar that's accurate on the 10k or 100k time scale...  Those types of time scales exceeds the amount of time that civilization has existed, and approaching time scales over which we evolved from other species...  Just to give some perspective...

> 

> Warner

>> -zefram

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