[LEAPSECS] Looking-glass, through

[Tony Finch]

On Wed, 12 Jan 2011, Steve Allen wrote:

> On Wed 2011-01-12T16:36:35 +0000, Tony Finch hath writ:

> >

> > Yes, but how accurately do you need clocks to track it? How frequently do

> > you need to make adjustments to correct for the atomic/angular rate error,

> > and what size of adjustment is acceptable?

>

> It would appear that making adjustments every 10 days is not

> often enough, at least in the US, viz:

> http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp50/NISTUTC.cfm

> http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp50/nistusno.cfm


That is completely beside the point! You have just changed the subject
from the acceptable error between UT1 and UTC to the error between
realizations of UTC.

You were complaining that abandoning leap seconds introduces an
uncorrected and increasing rate error between UT1 and UTC. I was pointing
out that if you don't need them to match to within a second then you don't
need to correct for the rate error very frequently, e.g. once every few
hundred years is sufficient if the acceptable UTC error is comparable to
the errors inherent in the timeone system.

Tony.
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