[LEAPSECS] BBC radio Crowd Science

[Warner Losh]

On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 10:58 AM, Zefram <zefram at fysh.org> wrote:
> Warner Losh wrote:
>>Saying that the two numbers are the same is improper. Or rather, it
>>depends on which time scale you are looking at them in if they are
>>improper.
>
> The numbers are not on any time scale.  The numbers are derived from
> the time values, but are a different thing.

They are second labels which have different rules for TAI and UTC.

>>However, if you look at the two times in UTC land and compute a delta
>>in UTA land, then you find the interval between N:23:59:60 and
>>N+1:00:00:00 you wind up with 1 second. That leads to the conclusion
>>that the difference starts at the beginning of the leap second.
>
> It does not lead to that conclusion in the general case.  (It does for
> the specific case of TAI-UTC changing from 0 s to 1 s.)  This is one of
> the options for handling TAI-UTC that I examined a few messages ago,
> and it leads to the conclusion that if TAI-UTC is initially positive
> then it increases some seconds *before* the leap second.

Actually it doesn't. I couldn't follow the logic on that argument at
all, so I didn't reply. At worst if you misapplied my method, you'd
get an off by one error.

> I'd examined it
> because it appeared to me that, by consistently using the irregular radix
> for subtraction, it was applying the principle that you were claiming to
> apply, though it leads to a different conclusion from the one you reached.
> (You responded that this was not your system.)

Yea, I've read through your message a couple of times and still don't
understand how you got to where you did.

> I'd still like to see from you a worked example of TAI-UTC for a time a
> few seconds before a positive leap second, where TAI has already ticked
> over into the following day, to compare against an equivalent example
> for a time inside the same positive leap second.  You've done a worked
> example inside a leap second, but not one in the preceding seconds.
> I want to see how you get a different result for 00:00:35-23:59:59 from
> that which you get for 00:00:36-23:59:60.

Sure. I still owe you that, and plan on giving you that. I'm a bit
crunched for time today since I've been working to get a release done
by noon today for the past week (for a problem that exploded into my
lap just after this thread started).

>>can't normalize N:23:59:60 to N+1:00:00:00 because in UTC they are two
>>different second labels.
>
> They certainly are different second labels, and in UTC they even
> label different seconds.  That's not in dispute.  I did not normalise
> one of them to the other.  The equivalence between them is only that
> certain relevant functions of UTC time labels, specifically MJD and its
> equivalents, yield the same value for both of these.  It is via those
> functions that TAI-UTC is tacitly defined.

When you convert to MJD, it appears you are assuming each day has
86400 seconds, which is why two seconds map to the same value.

Warner