[LEAPSECS] Definition of Standard time - Brooks Harris

[Brooks Harris]

On 2014-02-16 10:39 AM, Warner Losh wrote:

> On Feb 16, 2014, at 11:20 AM, Brooks Harris wrote:

>> Only a comprehensive plan which aims to fix the obvious and well known problems is going to head off the "kill Leap Seconds" movement.

> I think the momentum and general conservatism of the powers that be will do more to kill the plan than any other comprehensive plan. the status quo is powerful enough and works well enough that people are unwilling to risk a change.


Maybe. But we're still left with vague and difficult implementations 
that have known problems.


>

>> Or will we just roll over and watch 4500 years of timekeeping tradition evaporate?

> The kill the leap second stuff doesn't kill 4500 years of timekeeping tradition. Leap seconds broke with tradition my making minutes longer than 60s. It accepted there's an error between the time in London and the time we coordinate on and that's OK. The leap second moved one step away from the sun by averaging out the noise into discrete steps.

Right. Well I see it slightly differently. For centuries timekeeping 
sought to align the observed positions to some "absolute time 
reference", long recognizing the days length didn't divide into a year. 
Pope Gregory (partly) fixed that. Then when atomic clocks could keep 
very accurate time and astronomical observations were extremely precise 
we were finally in a position to quantify the difference between 
absolute time and observed rotational position. Integral seconds (Leap 
Seconds) was deemed accurate enough to solve the problem for general 
purposes. So I see UTC as the latest and greatest version of 4500 years 
of timekeeping tradition.


>

> Moving to atomic time doesn't undo 4500 years of timekeeping tradition. In fact, it restores the tradition of all minutes being the same length.

I think it abandons the long sought goal of aligning civil time to the 
position of the Sun. The "tradition of all minutes being the same 
length" was the best anybody could do. Everyone knew it wasn't exactly 
right. UTC solved that.

-Brooks