[LEAPSECS] drawing the battle lines

[Rob Seaman]

On Mar 20, 2013, at 8:28 PM, Joseph Gwinn <joegwinn at comcast.net> wrote:


> True enough, but beside my point.  The relationship between UTC and UT1 

> is piecewise linear between leap seconds, so there are steps in the 

> first derivative at the joints between lines,and steps in zeroth and 

> first derivatives at the leap seconds.


Ignoring the perpetual refrain about leap seconds being merely a representational issue, Kevin's question was about point 9 of the CCTF recommendation, which is an assertion about UT1 itself.  Saying UT1 is unacceptable as a time scale is like saying John Harrison's descendants should refund the longitude prize.  Many quantities can serve as timelike independent variables.


> It's pretty clear that ITU intends to make UTC essentially like TAI, 

> but not just as a paper clock.


If ceasing leap seconds would manage this transmogrification from paper clock to real clock, than simply applying DTAI manages the same thing.


> And I will say that in the big radars I build, leap seconds are a real 

> problem, one that we solve by using GPS System Time in all but human 

> interfaces.


So you recognized that UTC did not match your project requirements and used a different widely available time scale that did.  How exactly were you disadvantaged?  The ITU is attempting to turn one flavor of time scale into another.  The fallacy is the notion that we shouldn't have two time scales in the first place.

Rob