[LEAPSECS] Leap smear

[Warner Losh]

On Sep 19, 2011, at 2:35 AM, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:

> And it may well be that, in however many

> hundreds of years (I forget) it will be before we reach a (say) 3 hour

> difference, enough people will be working shifts or partying all day/night

> that nobody cares about the sun any more.


Please see the oft sited:

http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/dutc.html

where you'd see that 3 hours is between 1400-1800 years were we to immediately stop all leap seconds and not bother to use other means to speed the earth's rotation to keep it in sync with the atomic clocks.

I do agree that you've hit the nail on the head about Rob.  He loves his synodic day.  Trouble is people get up when it gets light (and thus don't care about what the clocks say), or they get up with their alarm goes off (in which case they don't care if it is light: the boss man says be here by 8:00am).  People care more about there being less light in winter making them depressed than they do about the mean apparent solar time error while they are ingesting their mid-day meal.

Warner