[LEAPSECS] The ends we seek

[Warner Losh]

On Jan 19, 2012, at 4:21 PM, Mark Calabretta wrote:

> Even now the many people who refer to UTC as a "discontinuous"

> time scale, many of whom should be expected to know better, seem

> not to be aware of it.


It is "discontinuous" for some definition of "discontinuous."  While strictly speaking time is an ordered, monotonically increasing full ordered set (which would make it continuous), it is none-the-less irregular as it has a non-uniform radix.  People that speak of it being "discontinuous" do so because that's easier to say and explain than non-uniform radix, even if it is pedantically incorrect.

When arithmetically mapped using 86400s days, it becomes discontinuous at the leap second.

Warner