[LEAPSECS] Java: ThreeTen/JSR-310

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 31 January 2011 12:48, Tony Finch <dot at dotat.at> wrote:

> On Sat, 29 Jan 2011, Stephen Colebourne wrote:

>>

>> Thus, no matter what, the Sun must peak at midday and it be night at

>> midnight, with adjustments to ensure that based on time-zones. Since

>> stopping leap seconds breaks that basic principle, it became

>> unacceptable.

>

> Actually the sun doesn't peak at 12:00 except on rare occasions, and in

> many places it never does, so your reasoning is incorrect.


I was being non-precise. If leap seconds are abolished, then the start
of day will start to shift and eventually midnight will be in the
middle of the day. The wider world has certain expectations about the
meaning of midday, midnight, and when specific times occur. Just
allowing midnight to continually shift isn't a valid solution to the
problem.


>> - TAI - simple incrementing number that is well-defined (although

>> clearly not everyone here will agree with that). TAI can be used into

>> the far future and the far past

>

> How do you map between TAI and UT in the far future and far past?


As discussed on another thread, I need a scale synchronized with TAI
at the moment, where the number simply increases continuously without
breaks one SI second at a time. Since this can't be defined clearly in
the past or the future, the best solution seems to be to call the
scale TAI-Java.

Stephen