[LEAPSECS] tinkering with time ?

[Mark Calabretta]

On Tue 2011/02/01 21:53:28 PDT, Warner Losh wrote
in a message to: leapsecs at leapsecond.com


>is on the order of 7.7k years.  The quadratic collapse will have effects 

>much sooner than that.  More on the order of 1200-1500 years, according 

>to the various projections of when more than 12s/year would be needed, 


So it seems that we're agreed that immediate action is not needed, at
least not for this reason.

After a millenium or so a simple tweak to the leap second insertion
algorithm should keep UTC going for another decent number of millenia.

In any case, it seems that you are suggesting that dropping leap
seconds and tweaking timezones will solve the quadratic problem.
When the mean solar day is 86401 SI seconds all timezones will need
to be shifted every decade.  Further down the track (continuing the
"T -> infinity" game) they'll have to be shifted every year.  Then
every month.  Then every week.  Then every day.  Then multiple times
per day.  So it doesn't solve the quadratic problem, only delays it.

Regards,
Mark Calabretta