[LEAPSECS] podcast from Orolia

[John Sauter]

On Tue, 2022-05-03 at 14:20 -0700, Steve Allen wrote:
> Orolia has a 17 minute podcast about leap seconds
> 
> https://www.orolia.com/place-and-time-episode-3-the-leap-second-on-trial/
> 

One of the links on that page is to the draft of the resolutions for
the 27th CGPM meeting, in November 2022. Resolution D notes that
"recent observations on the rotation rate of the Earth indicate the
possible need for the first negative leap second whose insertion has
never been foreseen or tested". However, they are calling for an
increase in the maximum value of UT1-UTC by 2035, which would be too
late to avoid the negative leap second, if current predictions hold up.

Also, of course, it isn't true that negative leap seconds have never
been foreseen or tested. ITU-R TF.460-6 forsees negative leap seconds,
and Microsoft made testing applications for the ability to handle leap
seconds easier when they added support for leap seconds to Windows 10.

Notice that they "propose a new maximum value for the difference (UT1-
UTC) that will ensure the continuity of UTC for at least a century". To
avoid leap seconds for a century would mean increasing the maximum
allowed value of abs(UT1-UTC) to around 60 seconds, considering that
there have been 27 leap seconds in the last half century. I expect that
means that the leap second correction, when it comes, will be 60
seconds instead of 1. After a century of no leap seconds, having a leap
minute will cause a lot of anguish. Thus, this proposal has the effect
of wishing a big problem onto our descendents so we don't have a small
problem today.
    John Sauter (John_Sauter at systemeyescomputerstore.com)
-- 
get my PGP public key with gpg --locate-external-keys
John_Sauter at systemeyescomputerstore.com

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