[LEAPSECS] Do good fences make good neighbors?

[Rob Seaman]

On Jan 14, 2011, at 2:40 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:


> In message <F1C36C4F-A32A-4EBB-BFDE-C51C8A156557 at noao.edu>, Rob Seaman writes:

> 

>> My answer has always been that both are necessary.  Leap seconds are one possible way to reconcile these very different flavors of time.

> 

> They are not different flavors of time, one is a measurement of time, the other a measurement of speed of rotation.

> 

> Both are needed, for sure, but that does not make the both measurements of time.


If you wish.  In that case, note that sexagesimal notation is used for angles, while systems like Unix often express "measurements of time" intervals as unending counts of seconds (SI or otherwise) since some epoch.  That epoch, eg midnight 1 Jan 1970, was itself selected as representing an angle related to the Earth.

Both are needed.  Any proposal to redefine UTC such that it no longer conveys both should thus address the mitigation that results from imposing such a change.

Rob